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

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Sun Apr 18 14:08:30 EDT 2004


At 8:41 AM -0700 4/18/04, Dr Dale M Wheeler wrote:
>
>>I remember still when I first realized that Latin "cum" and "quod" clauses
>>variously translated "since," "when," "although," "because" actually were
>>introduced by a particle that means no more than "it being the case that
>>.."; the same is true with the so-called "subjective" and "objective"
>>genitive: they are not semantic categories in Greek at all: the
>>speaker/writer uses them as syntactic links; even if he IMPLIES a more
>>precise meaning, that precise meaning is not at all EXPLICIT in the
>>syntactic link itself; it's something that one has to surmise from the
>>broader context--and making that surmise is always somewhat subjective.
>
>That is my point exactly.  But I would argue that since everything admits
>more than one possibility in both grammar and lexicography, the interpreter
>must analyze all the possibilities of the data involved and see how the
>pieces most reasonably fit together...I wouldn't call that subjective,
>since that makes it sound like its totally up to the interpreter to impose
>any meaning he chooses on a text.  Objective versus Subjective genitive
>choices, for example, are based on the lexical and contextually conditioned
>possibilities of the words/phrases connected by the genitive case
>form.   The choice between the two is something we all do every time we
>read or hear English (if that's your native language); we are constantly
>making choices between the valid and sharable possibilities for each verbal
>icon.  We make those choices based on the limited lexical and grammatical
>options we share with other native speakers and the clues the
>speaker/writer has embedded in the context of the utterance.  Again, I
>wouldn't call that subjective; its just the way language works...its
>probabilistic, in my mind, not subjective.
>
>Its just that NT interpretation has not normally dealt with, recognized,
>cataloged, etc., the use of these various semantically neutral
>connections...ie., you won't find them in any grammar book (well, you will
>find asyndeton, Semitic KAI, some others occasionally), but that doesn't
>mean that writers are not using them in the same way as circumstantial
>ptcs., ie., to advance the development of the argument.  It has been my
>observation that semantically neutral connections are used in one of two
>ways:  1) to make a connection VERY forceful (eg., Eph 4:1-3 with vv. 4-6)
>or 2) to continue a developing argument in a minor way (ie., the major
>subject and complement have already been explicitly laid out with
>grammatically and semantically obvious structural markers, eg.,
>conjunctions), frequently as a means of transitioning from one complete
>idea to the next complete idea by means of a gradual change of subject matter.

Well, what I said was "somewhat subjective"--by which I mean to say that
any one inerpreter's judgment on one of these might not win an easy
consensus among B-Greekers ...
-- 

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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