[B-Greek] Meaning of KATECONTWN in Romans 1:18
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Tue May 6 09:59:34 EDT 2003
At 10:22 PM -0400 5/5/03, David Sugg wrote:
>I am currently doing a word study on Paul's use of KATECONTWN in Romans
>1:18: "APOKALUPTETAI GAR ORGH QEOU AP hOURANOU EPI PASAN ASEBEIAN KAI
>ADIKIAN ANQRWPWN TWN THN ALHQEIAN EN ADIKIA KATECONTWN."
>
>Putting aside theological issues, can anyone direct me to some good articles
>or discussions of the semantical or syntactical reasons for choosing among
>the different nuances given by BAGF. What are the reasons/arguments from
>choosing between "suppressing", "restraining", "hindering", or just plain
>"holding."
>
>I have always been taught that KATECONTWN means "actively suppressing", with
>the idea of holding in prison.
>
>I guess my main question boils down to how to take KATA, as Perfective or
>more in the sense of down. Any help from the group would be helpful, and
>greatly appreciated.
I think that the primary element here is the "oppositional" or "down" sense
of the prefix KATA. BDAG offers as the first sense of several (the article
is worth consulting, but I'm only giving the chief headers):
"1. to prevent the doing of someth. or cause to be ineffective, prevent,
hinder, restrain: a. to hold someone back from going away hold back,
hinder, prevent from going away; b. hold down, suppress ...stifle the
truth by unrighteousness/ wickedness Ro 1:18 (cp. JFitzmyer, Ro [AB], '93,
278; but s. 6 below); c. to prevent someone from exercising power,
restrain, check "
My understanding of this particular expression in Rom 1:18 is that it's
sort of akin to Sartre's conception of "mauvaise foi"--which amounts to
deliberately ignoring to the point of never seriously entertaining a
proposition that one is profoundly aware of as true--in the sense that
there are some "obvious" facts that we pretend we're not even aware of and
act without taking them into consideration.
--
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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