[B-Greek] ROM 8:13 Mood of QANATOUTE
davidsugg at comcast.net
davidsugg at comcast.net
Tue Jun 7 15:07:06 EDT 2005
Thanks to all those who have replied. When I stated that "most take QANATOUTE as imperative" I was referring to most of the articles and books that I had read were stating that to be the case, not that most commentators hold to that position. Since nearly everyone I have read refers to John Owen's "The Mortification of Sin in Believers," it could be they are basing their statements off his insistence that mortification is a duty, to mean that the imperative must be used. I had not thought about the fact that the verb was in the protasis, which should have been my clue that it could not be indicative.
Since I saw the replies I went back and checked Owen's work, as I thought he would not have made my rookie mistake. Owen does not state that the verb here is in the imperative, even though several writers implied that. He does say it is a duty, but that would be a deduction from the overall flow of the argument, not from the mood. "If you want to live, Then you must mortify" could be another way of rephrasing the argument.
When morphology leaves several possibiliities, am I correct to conclude that you must use context to determine which one fits best?
Thanks again for all the prompt replies!
Dave Sugg
--
David J. Sugg
3200 Raye Road
Thorndale, PA 19372
> On Tue, 07 Jun 2005 16:32:06 +0000 davidsugg at comcast.net writes:
> > I have been doing a study on verses dealing with sanctification, and
> > have a
> > question about the mood of QANAOUTE in Romans 8:13. First the text:
> >
> > EI GAR KATA SARKA ZTHE MELLETE APOQNHSKEIN EI DE PNEUMATI TAS
> > PRAXEIS TOU
> > SWMATOS THANATOUTE ZHSESQE.
> >
> > It seems that most take QANATOUTE AS being in the imperative. Since
> > the
> > morphology is the same for the imperative and the indicative (both
> > present and
> > imperfect tense), how does one know that this should be taken as an
> > imperative?
> > The reason this caught my eye was that all of the morphologically
> > tagged texts
> > that I looked at had this listed as a present indicative, not a
> > present
> > imperative.
> >
> > What are the clues to correctly identifying the mood when the
> > morphological form
> > is the same for several moods?
> >
> > I checked the archives and did not see this covered.
> > Thanks for your help.
> >
> > --
> > David J. Sugg
> > 3200 Raye Road
> > Thorndale, PA 19372
> ___________________
>
> The others who posted replies are correct that this must be an indicative
> (and is taken as such by every translation I have seen) since it is in
> the protasis of a conditional sentence. It is also true that the form is
> identical whether 2 pl indic. or 2 pl imper. Cf. Rom 8.13 and 1 Sam
> 22.17 (LXX) to see how this is the case. Perhaps the fact that it is a
> contract verb and therefore has a different connecting vowel(s) has
> caused the confusion for you -- it wouldn't be uncommon.
>
> george
> gfsomsel
> ___________
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