[B-Greek] FQANW in Mt 12:28

Mark admin at asarian-host.net
Sat Apr 16 09:54:25 EDT 2005


Dear Dr. Conrad,

In article:

http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/b-greek/2000-April/010883.html

You wrote, about Mt 12:28,

> I have long felt that FQANW is one of the strangest verbs in the Greek
> language, and its usage in this text seems one of the strangest usages
> of it; I take it as something akin to: "Then the Kingdom of God has
> arrived here before you were aware of it!"

Thayer's Lexicon says about the verb FQANW that it has a meaning of
'prior-ity', in the sense of "to come before, to preceed," as in: "We who
are still living when the Lord returns will not rise to meet him ahead of
those who are in their graves" (1Th 4:15; NLT). But also that the sense of
'prior-ity' is often absent, meaning simply "to come to, to arrive at; to
reach, to attain" -- or rather, following my own intuition, the sense of
'prior-ity' is embedded in the sense of somethinhg having 'drawn near'
(from an event set in motion in the past), as in: "But the anger of God
has caught up with them at last" (1Th 2:16; NLT).

At any rate, to me, it made perfect sense to translate Mt 12:28 as follows
(for content):

"But if I cast out devils by the Spirit of God, then you can be sure the
Kingdom of God has arrived {at last}!"

In the sense of having 'caught up' with them: it is finally here; which
is to say, "the Kingdom of God has drawn near" (Mk 1:15).

I am, therefore, most curious as to why you believe FQANW in Mt 12:28 must
carry a meaning of 'prior-ity', so as to say:

"Then the Kingdom of God has arrived here before you were aware of it!"

Thank you for your time,

- Mark




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