[B-Greek] RE: {B-Greek] Eph.2:8 - BDAG
George F Somsel
gfsomsel at juno.com
Sat Jun 18 20:14:48 EDT 2005
On Sat, 18 Jun 2005 15:32:14 -0700 (PDT) Larry Baker
<bakerlarryn at yahoo.com> writes:
> >> THi GAR XARITI ESTE SESWiSMENOI DIA PISTEWS KAI
> TOUTO OUK EC hUMWN,
> >> QEOY
> >> TO DWRON.
> >> Note the word TOUTO. It is from hOUTOS, hAUTH,
> TOUTO. A check in
> >> BDAG
> >> (Baur, Danker, Arndt & Gingrich _A Greek-English
> Lexicon of the New
> >> Testament and Other Early Christian Literature_
> (3rd edition), which
> >> is
> >> THE lexicon to have for NT studies (Accept no
> substitutes. Go, sell
> >> your
> >> first-born child and buy one.), reveals that it
> signifies first of
> >> all
> >> "the person or thing comparatively near at hand in
> the discourse
> >> material." In this case that would be PISTIS. It
> is thus a matter
> >> of
> >> the nearest referent.
> >>
> >> george
>
>
> BDAG 3rd ed. on page 741 references this very verse
> and pronoun, as adverbial - "and at that, and
> especially" - rather than a specific word, as
> antecedent. This would be similar to 3 John 5, as
> Wallace notes on page 335 in his GGBB.
>
> Larry N. Baker
_____________
This is all very interesting, but it is not necessary to refer to 3 Jn 5
when in the immediately preceding page Daniel Wallace refers to the
passage itself. He states
This is the most debated text in terms of the antecedent of the
demonstrative pronoun, t??t?. The standard interpretations include: (1)
grace as antecedent, (2) faith as antecedent, (3) the concept of a
grace-by-faith salvation as antecedent, and (4) ?a? t??t? having an
adverbial force with no antecedent (and especially).
The first and second options suffer from the fact that t??t? is neuter
while XARITI and PISTEWS are feminine. Some have argued that the gender
shift causes no problem because (a) there are other examples in Greek
literature in which a neuter demonstrative refers back to a noun of a
different gender *, and (b) the t??t? has been attracted to the gender of
d????, the predicate nominative **. These two arguments need to be
examined together.
Wallace wishes to take KAI TOUTO as adverbial and render it as "and
especially not by your own doing."
* Here Wallace references an article in _The Journal of the Evangelical
Theological Society_ "Thank God for the Genitive" by R. H. Contess in
which he examines 2 passages from Plato and one from Xenophon. Wallace
discounts this evidence on the basis that he does not reference any NT
passage.
** Wallace objects that TOUTO is not the predicate nom of DWRWN but of an
implied "it" in the following clause.
Sorry, Dan, but I don't find your argument convincing. It seems obvious
that the TOUTO and the implied "it" of the following clause are the same.
Whatever TOUTO references is also referenced by "it." The logic of the
passage also militates against understanding KAI TOUTO in an adverbial
sense since if you are saved THi XARITI which BDAG defines as "a
beneficent disposition toward someone" and DIA PISTEWS, this already
presupposes that is is not EC hUMWN but from the other person thereby
making it simply a restatement of the same assertion without adding
anything thereto. If there is any purpose to stating KAI TOUTO OUK EC
hUMWN, it must refer to something else. I would therefore continue to
maintain that TOUTO finds its antecedent in PISTEWS. It is only thus
that the KAI TOUTO OUK . . . takes on any real meaning.
george
gfsomsel
___________
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