[B-Greek] Col. 1:13a causal pronoun FOLLOW Up2

Dr Dale M Wheeler dalemw at multnomah.edu
Sun Apr 18 11:46:57 EDT 2004


Well, as I said, some folks will quibble...(-;

Responses interspersed...


At 05:49 AM 4/18/2004 -0700, waldo slusher wrote:

>These examples provided by Dr. Wheeler have so far
>only served to confirm to me that the PRONOUN clauses
>do NOT convey the semantic implicatures that are
>assigned to them. What I am having is a hard time
>taking adverbial grammatical features (means, result,
>concession, etc) and trying to transfer those
>functions to adjectival grammatical features. What I
>think Dr. Wheeler's examples illustrate is the
>tendency to see TOO MUCH in grammar.

I am not at all arguing for grammar per se, but the semantic/idea 
development within ideas/arguments. As I said, what is going on with 
rel.pron. is no different than a host of other semantically neutral 
juxtapositions.  NONE of these juxtaposing constructions has any 
GRAMMATICAL clues per se to tell the reader what the semantic argument 
development is; the reader must "intuit" it out from the nature of the 
preceding and following statements. For example, I would see the asyndeton 
at Eph 4:4 and indicating the reason (vv. 1-3) that the Ephesians should 
preserve and live in unity is because God Himself is a Unity (vv. 
4-6).  The only "clue" to this connection is the contents on each side of 
the "non-connection". So why didn't Paul just stick a GAR in there; I 
suspect that he wanted the two clauses--which obviously go together and 
relate to one another--to be forcefully juxtaposed and let the reader pick 
up on the connection.  Such a "perceived" rather than explicit connection 
is, in many ways, more powerful to the mind of the reader.

The idea that circumstantial participles are somehow magically different 
from every other semantically neutral juxtaposing structural marker is, I 
believe, false.  That they--just like asyndeton, rel.pron., apposition, 
(Semitically influenced) KAI, etc.--indicate the juxtaposing of two ideas 
without grammatically telling the reader EXACTLY HOW they are related, is 
obvious.  And the method one uses, as I said before, is EXACTLY the same 
with circumstantial participles as it is with other semantically neutral 
structural markers.  Just because ptcs. are verbs doesn't, in my mind, 
change the situation at all.  The development of an argument, while 
generally dependent on verbals, is not WHOLLY dependent on verbals, eg., 
prepositional phrases.



>However, this criticism should not be taken too
>harshly. I do not disagree with the adverbial
>relationships that Dr. Wheeler is "seeing" here, all I
>want to say is the author of the text purposefully
>avoided connecting those dots by employing a relative
>pronoun. Had the author used a participial clause,
>then we are to unpack the adverbial functions (pl.
>since more than one is permitted), since that is what
>participles grammatically require; if the author, as
>here, uses a relative pronoun to connect the clauses,
>no such adverbial relation is to be unpacked
>GRAMMATICALLY SPEAKING.

Of course it depends on what you mean by "purposefully avoided connecting 
those dots."  For example, do writers of Hebrew (and those similar 
situations in the NT with KAI) avoid "connecting the dots" when they use 
the conjunction WAW, which can be translated not just "and", but also, 
"because, then, so that," etc., etc., etc.  I'd say no.  Rather the writer 
evidently believes that his readers can figure out the argumentative 
relationship created by the WAW juxtaposing the two clauses based on the 
contents of the two juxtaposed ideas and their resultant relationship.  Did 
the writer understand the connection...of course.  Did the writer feel 
obligated to make it more explicit...clearly not.  Is the connection a 
valid part of the text...surely.  Its just not there grammatically, but 
semantically.  So the dots are there, and they are connected, just in a 
more subtle way than by using a conjunction.



>Take for example Dr. Wheeler's first example, Eph.
>1:23
>
>KAI PANTA hUPETAZEN hUPO TOUS PODAS AUTOU, KAI AUTON
>EDWKEN KEFALHN hUPER PANTA THi EKKLHSIAi
>hHTIS ESTIN TO SWMA AUTOU, TO PLHRWMA TOU TA PANTA EN
>PASIN PLHROUMENOU
>
>(NET Bible translation)
>1:22 And God put all things under Christ's feet, and
>he gave him to the church as head over all things.
>1:23 Now the church is his body, the fullness of him
>who fills all in all.
>
>Dr. Wheeler's semantic analysis:
>
>Result:  Eph 1:23 - The result of God appointing the
>Messiah to be head of the Church is that He, as
>universal Sovereign, controls/fill the Church.
>
>Although this could very well be true, one gains this
>information by an understanding of Paul's larger
>theological developments, not on the PRONOUN used to
>introduce a subordinate clause (and how that
>subordinate clause relates to the main clause). This
>is what I mean by making grammar say TOO MUCH.



That is exactly my point; the pronoun doesn't tell you the relationship; it 
just tells you that the two clauses are juxtaposed and semantically related 
in some way.  It is the relationship of the ideas on both sides of the rel. 
pron. (again, exactly like a circumstantial ptc.) which tells you how to 
relate the ideas.




>Again, Dr. Wheeler uses Eph. 3:11
>
>KATA PROQESIN TWN AIWNWN hHN EPOIHSEN EN TWi CRISTWi
>IHSOU TWi KURIWi hHMWN,
>
>(NET Bible translation)
>3:11 This was according to the eternal purpose that he
>accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord
>
>His semantics...
>Means:  Eph 3:11b - The means by which God
>accomplished His eternal plan was in the Messiah.
>
>Again, this could very well be a true statement, but
>would anyone argue that this is what the text is
>saying. The means is known at the historical (and
>theological) level, not on the
>grammatical/syntactical/semantic level.
>
>I really think we need to be careful not to import
>more into a text than it can bear. If one wants to
>teach relationships, by all means do so, but I really
>think we ought not to "confirm" our teachings by
>appealing to these grammatical relationships.
>
>Even with an adverbial participle, the author is not
>EXPLICITLY laying out the relationship between the
>clauses; he is relying on a contextual development.
>That is why multiple relationships can successfully be
>argued with a particular adverbial participle.

This is EXACTLY what I said in my first post...




>We can certainly teach relationships that exist
>between clauses, but I would not appeal to the
>grammar. (Dr. Conrad, who I believe would agree with
>Dr. Wheeler, described this process as "divining" if I
>recall; I would agree with that description more so
>than appealing to a semantic one.)

Once again, we are NOT talking about grammar/syntactically explicit 
relationships here...that's not the issue.  I'm not arguing that you can 
look at a rel.pron. and automatically know how the two clauses are 
related...that is of course, nonsense.  All the rel.pron. is doing is 
telling you that the two clauses are related somehow within the developing 
argument; then you as the interpreter must figure out how.

So, if figuring out the developing argument based on semantically neutral 
structural markers is "divining", then that's exactly what interpreters are 
doing with circumstantial participles, since they give NO clue as to which 
among the various options the interpreter should choose (aside from some 
general temporal relationships).  Indeed all decisions about ALL structural 
markers is "divining", since there is NO SINGLE conjunction, preposition, 
circumstantial ptc., etc., which must always and can only bear ONE meaning. 
The interpreter's options are fewer, but not absolute. How does one figure 
out if OUN is logical, resultant, or temporal?  One looks at the two ideas 
being connected by the OUN to see what they are discussing and how they are 
related.  The process in all of these cases, whether the structural marker 
has no semantic marking or some semantic marking, is exactly the same.

Blessings...


**************************************************************************
Dale M. Wheeler, Ph.D.
Asst. Prof., Biblical Languages/Bible  Multnomah Bible College
8435 NE Glisan Street                       Portland, OR  97220
V: 503-251-6416    F:503-251-6478     E: dalemw at multnomah.edu
**************************************************************************





More information about the B-Greek mailing list