[B-Greek] 1 Tim. 3:16 and Greek poetry

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Fri Apr 23 18:26:11 EDT 2004


But that is what Greek rhetoricians termed homoeoteleuton and it is
comparable to a device commonly found in Greek verse where an adjective and
its noun positioned at the caesura and at the line-end had the same
case-ending and achieved a sort of rhyme.

At 5:36 PM -0400 4/23/04, CWestf5155 at aol.com wrote:
>Arie and Ted,
>
>Naturally, this is all theory and it's about scholars making a case that
>others find convincing; there are no proofs.
>
>The poetic repetition of QH was my observation off the top of my head of why
>someone might classify this as a hymn.
>
>But I have Fee's commentary on 1 & 2 Timothy and Titus on hand now.  He makes
>the following points:
>
>It is "almost certainly a hymn or hymn fragment"
>Six rhythmic lines
>Each line has a verb in first position--aorist passives ending with the
>rhythmic QH
>Followed by a preposition
>The implied subject of each verb is Christ
>"On that much all modern interpreters are agreed"
>
>These theories are connected to source criticism, but also Eph. 5:19 (and Col
>3:16) appear to indicate that "speaking to each other" in Psalms, Hymns and
>spiritual songs is a practice that conceivably one may find in NT literature.
>So where there is metre, and/or this kind of well-organized, compact passage
>with formal, vocal and semantic repetition, it makes a very good candidate.
>
> Yes, these features are standard in Hebrew poetry/hymns/psalms, and commonly
>used as rhetorical devices in Greek.  I'd be interested in hearing additional
>comments about Greek poetry and other hymns though.  I just don't think we
>have early examples of hymns.
>
>Cindy Westfall
>Denver
>
>In a message dated 4/23/2004 1:08:04 PM Mountain Standard Time,
>dirkzwager at pandora.be writes:
>CORRECTION
>In James 1: 17 you should read DOSIS, not DWSIS.
>So my message should be:
>
>
>Ted,
>
>As far as I can see Greek poetry was based on metre and Jewish poetry on
>parallellism.
>So I am very curious if someone can give examples of Christian hymns like
>the one you quoted but from *outside the NT*.
>
>If not, we have to ask, on what base some commentaries consider some
>passages of the NT as hymns. Of course the language / stile sounds poetic,
>but what is the proof that it were really hymns?
>
>
>Some lines in metre in the NT:
>
>Titus 1: 12 KRHTES AEI YEUSTAI, KAKA QHRIA, GASTERES ARGAI
>(dactylic)
>
>James (!!!) 1: 17 PASA DOSIS AGAQH KAI PAN DWRHMA TELEION
>(dactylic)
>
>1 Cor 15: 33 FQEIROUSIN HQH CRHSTA OMILIAI KAKAI
>(jambic)
>
>Arie
>
>
>
>Dr. A. Dirkzwager
>Hoeselt, Belgium
>e-mail dirkzwager at pandora.be
>---
>B-Greek home page: http://metalab.unc.edu/bgreek
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-- 

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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