[B-Greek] "event words"? (Rom 5:2)

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at ioa.com
Mon Aug 29 08:55:40 EDT 2005


On Aug 29, 2005, at 8:43 AM, Stephen Cooper wrote:

> At 7:52 PM -0700 8/28/05, Eddie Mishoe wrote:
>
>> Romans 5:2 ends...
>>
>> KAI KAUCWMEQA EP’ ELPIDI THS DOXHS TOU QEOU
>>
>> One commentary I've consulted indicates that DOXHS is
>> an "event word," and that the relationship it has with
>> ELPIDI needs to be expressed. He suggests: we boast in
>> the hope that God will reveal his glory.
>>
>> The NIV has "we boast in our hope of SHARING the glory
>> of God."
>>
>> What kind of words semantically are "event words"? I
>> had previously reserved event words for verbal nouns.
>> I'm not so sure I would have figured out that DOXH is
>> an "event" just by its relation to ELPIS. Are they any
>> helpful guidelines for when to look for "events" in
>> nouns, and are there certain constructs that lend to
>> that usage?
>>
>>
>>
>> Eddie Mishoe
>> Pastor
>>
>
> Call me simple-minded for recourse to the old categories of
> descriptive grammar :) but isn't ELPIDI THS DOXHS TOU QEOU just an
> objective genitive?  The object of our hope, according to the
> apostle, is [attaining] "the glory of God".  The Vetus Latina (in
> Ambrosiaster) certainly takes it that way: in spe gloriae dei.

If I may say so, I think you've missed the point. Old-fashioned  
grammar (NOT "descriptive linguistics") calls this an objective- 
genitive -- and that's one of my peeves about old-fashioned grammar:  
the notion that adnominal genitives fall into real subcategories that  
Greek speakers/writers had in mind. I think that the "objective  
genitive" is fundamentally a subcategory invented by and intended to  
be used as an aid to translation into a target language; properly  
speaking, all adnominal genitives are structurally identical.

But the point of the original post here was rather that DOXA in the  
phrase EP' ELPIDI THS DOXHS TOU QEOU may, probably does refer not to  
an attribute of God but to the event commonly referred to as the  
PAROUSIA: the coming of the Lord in glory, or "the glorious coming."

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad2 at mac.com
WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/




More information about the B-Greek mailing list