[B-Greek] APARCH in 1 Cor 15.20
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Sun Aug 15 18:20:36 EDT 2004
At 4:11 PM -0500 8/15/04, Steven Lo Vullo wrote:
>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.
I do think that the definition's insistence upon the juxtaposition of the
two nouns in apposition is too rigid; on the other hand, I think you're
right to want to understand the relationship of APARCH TWN KEKOIMHMENWN in
a sort of adverbial relationship to CRISTOS EGHGERTAI EK NEKRWN, much as
one would understand an adjective or participle that qualifies the
subject-predicate combination adverbially, e.g. CRISTOS EGHGERTAI PRWTOS =
"Christ has risen first (of all that rise), or CRISTOS EGHGERTAI ARCOMENOS
PANTWN TWN EGERQHSOMENWN, or some such. But I'm not quite sure that an
appositional phrase in agreement with a subject doesn't function this way
pretty commonly. I'm thinking off the top of my head here, probably a
dangerous thing to do. It does deserve further investigation.
--
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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