[B-Greek] hWSPER and KAI GAR in 1 Cor 8.5
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Thu Apr 17 07:51:40 EDT 2003
At 1:33 AM -0500 4/17/03, Steven Lo Vullo wrote:
>Greetings all:
First I'm going to expand the transcript to include the larger context:
8:4 PERI THS BRWSEWS OUN TWN EIDWLOQUTWN, OIDAMEN hOTI OUDEN EIDWLON EN
KOSMWi KAI hOTI OUDEIS QEOS EI MH hEIS.
>
>1 Cor 8.5 KAI GAR EIPER EISIN LEGOMENOI QEOI EITE EN OURANWi EITE EPI
>GHS, hWSPER EISIN QEOI POLLOI KAI KURIOI POLLOI
>
8:6 ALL' hHMIN hEIS QEOS hO PATHR EX hOU TA PANTA KAI hHMEIS EIS AUTON,
KAI hEIS KURIOS IHSOUS CRISTOS DI' hOU TA PANTA KAI hHMEIS DI' AUTOU.
>Many translations treat the comparative clause marked by hWSPER as
>parenthetical or interjectional. Is this indeed the case? Or is this
>comparative clause straightforwardly subordinate to EISIN in the
>preceding conditional clause? If parenthetical/interjectional, can
>anyone think of any other examples of hWSPER used in the same way?
>
>Also, should KAI GAR be construed strictly with the conditional clause
>marked by EIPER (making EIPER even more emphatic) or with the sentence
>as a whole, both the protasis and the apodosis, even though the
>apodosis is introduce by the coordinate adversative conjunction ALL'?
>============
It seems to me that the argument develops in context out of the clause
OIDAMEN hOTI OUDEN EIDWLON EN KOSMWi EI MH hEIS. This is what "we know":
there really EXISTS only ONE God. That's explained in 8:5-6, which I would
rather freely translate as "After all (GAR) even if there ARE so-called
"gods"--be it in heaven or be it on earth-- (as of course there ARE
NUMEROUS "gods" and NUMEROUS "lords"), yet even so, so far as we are
concerned, there is (only) ONE God the Father ... and (only) ONE Lord Jesus
Christ ..." That is to say, I think that the hWSPER clause is intended to
expand upon the LEGOMENOI--upon the ALLEGED existence of gods and lords.
Thus the hWSPER clause should be understood as clarifying what Paul meant
by asserting in straightforward terms what "WE know." After all, this is a
matter of the convictions held by those whose faith is "strong" and by
those whose faith is relatively "weaker." We must understand the scruples
of those whose faith is "weaker": they may have lingering suppositions that
those gods to whom the meat sold in the market from animals offered to
non-existent gods is somehow really tainted. I think Paul uses the OIDAMEN
here very carefully and then follows it in 8:7 with ALL' OUK EN PASIN hH
GNWSIS.
I would understand the KAI GAR not as a single unit but rather the GAR as
linking verses 5 and 6 together as explanatory to verse 4 and the KAI as
governing the EIPER clause.
I don't know whether or not the question arises out of the effort to
outline this or not, but it does seem to me that one problematic aspect of
outlining is that the larger contextual discourse is somewhat arbitrarily
broken into smaller units that are analyzed independently of that larger
contextual discourse, and it doesn't always work as successfully.
--
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/
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