[B-Greek] APARCH in 1 Cor 15.20

Steven Lo Vullo slovullo at mac.com
Sun Aug 15 17:11:48 EDT 2004


Hi all:

1 Cor 15.20 NUNI DE CRISTOS EGHGERTAI EK NEKRWN APARCH TWN KEKOIMHMENWN.

At first blush it would seem that APARCH stands in apposition to 
CRISTOS. This is in fact how the relationship is described in the helps 
I have consulted that actually comment on it. However, after further 
reflection this didn't seem to fit. Wallace lists four features of 
simple apposition:

"An appositional construction involves (1) two adjacent substantives 
(2) in the same case, (3) which refer to the same person or thing, (4) 
and have the same syntactical relation to the rest of the clause" (p. 
48).

CRISTOS and APARCH are in the same case and refer to the same person, 
but are not adjacent (unless I am being too rigid in my understanding 
of "adjacent"). Also, I'm not exactly sure they have exactly the same 
syntactical relation to the rest of the clause.

In addition, Wallace says that typically the first noun is anarthrous 
and the appositional noun is articular. This is not the case here.

The sense also seems to be somewhat forced when APARCH is taken as 
appositional: "But now, Christ, firstfruits of those who have fallen 
asleep, has been raised from the dead." Since the statement is meant to 
*assert* that Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, why an 
appositive that *assumes* that? Rather, the idea seems to be, "But now, 
Christ has been raised from the dead *as* firstfruits of those who have 
fallen asleep." It seems the relationship is something like that of an 
object-complement construction, except that we have nominatives here. I 
thought we could perhaps understand an elliptical WN here before 
APARCH, but I'm not sure what the force or significance of that would 
be.

Of course, it may just be that I'm being too rigid in my understanding 
of apposition.

Does anyone have any comments on this. I would appreciate them.
============

Steven Lo Vullo
Madison, WI




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