[B-Greek] hEILATO

Jim West jwest at highland.net
Thu Dec 23 09:47:12 EST 2004


At 01:15 AM 12/23/2004, you wrote:

>These are the occurances found by a strongs # search, which may or may not 
>be useful.

I have never really been a friend of Strong's simply because it is somewhat 
akin, for the Greek scholar, to eating food that someone else has already 
chewed.  That may be necessary for babies who have to eat crushed food, but 
adults ought to be able to chew for themselves.


>The lexicon says that it is probably akin to AIRW, so I decided to use 
>some of its implications in my translation (before beginning this word study).

That's correct (though the form is probably airew).


>It seems to be in the middle voice in all three occurances, and seems to 
>have the idea of:

The verb was originally  aiJrevomai  so it might be better to understand it 
as middle in form but active in function.  Recall that forms that are 
originally middle/ passive may indeed be translated as actives.  Hence here 
I would render it something like "chose", i.e., God chose you... etc.

Bauer notes that the middle is used exclusively in the NT in the sense of 
"choos" but here it seems a bit of a stretch the say "God chose himself for 
you".  The simpler reading, God chose you, makes more sense.  At least to 
me.  And again since those verbs originally middle / passive in form can be 
translated active I think it a legitimate rendering.

Best,

Jim


++++++++++++++++++++
Jim West, ThD
Adjunct Professor of Biblical Studies
Quartz Hill School of Theology

http://web.infoave.net/~jwest Biblical Studies Resources
http://biblical-studies.blogspot.com Biblical Theology Weblog




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