[B-Greek] Romans 1:16

Jeffrey B. Gibson jgibson000 at comcast.net
Fri Oct 10 23:42:17 EDT 2003



waldo slusher wrote:

> Jeffrey B. wrote:
>
> > But is there anything in the grammar and syntax of
> > the text to give us
> > reason to believe that what Paul is doing is
> > responding to a challenge?
> > That is to say, is there any grammatical or
> > syntactical or stylistic
> > (or, if I might ask, contextual)  reason to see that
> > what Paul is up to
> > here is not answering a question (what is the
> > Gospel?, how do **you**
> > define it?),  but is defending a claim **about**
> > what the (his) Gospel
> > is  **that is in dispute**  --  and is in effect
> > saying something along
> > the lines of  "contrary to what has been said about
> > TO EUAGGELION, it
> > is indeed  the power of God for the purpose of
> > Salvation?
>
> Grammar and syntax, as I use them, are
> surface/formal/structural level issues and you seem to
> be asking a question about Paul's motive for what he
> has had written here.

No I'm not, actually. I am -- ultimately -- asking how we **know** when
any ancient Greek author is emphasizing a predicate or defining
something (x is **y**) and when he/she is defending the truth of a
proposition against a real or perceived denial of that assertion (x
**is** y, gosh darn it!).  Now I think it would be hard to deny ancient
authors were intent sometimes to do the former and sometimes to do the
latter. But how do we know **when** they are doing one rather than the
other?

Yours,

Jeffrey


--

Jeffrey B. Gibson, D.Phil. (Oxon.)

1500 W. Pratt Blvd. #1
Chicago, IL 60626

jgibson000 at comcast.net



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