[B-Greek] Re 1.Cor.6:3

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at ioa.com
Wed Nov 23 16:35:40 EST 2005


On Nov 23, 2005, at 4:23 PM, clare arnold wrote:

> 1 Cor.6:3;  OUK OIDATE OTI AGGELOUS KRINOUMEN MHTI GE BIWTIKA;
>
> Is it possible that MHTI is the dative from MHTIS, H?  Can the  
> translation
> of this verse be rendered:
>
> "Don't you understand then that we will judge the things of this  
> life with
> the wisdom of angels?"

No, that isn't really possible. MHTIS, "wisdom" (also the name of the  
mother of the goddess Athena) is a poetic word found in Homer and in  
old lyric poetry chiefly, and while it does have a genitive MHTIOS  
and LSJ gives a dative MHTI with a long iota, the prose genitive is  
MHTIDOS. More important is that in the present collocation, (a) MHTI  
is followed by the enclitic GE, which has to be taken into account  
and can work with MHTI as a negative particle (see BDAG on MHTI); and  
(b) AGGELOUS is accusative object of KRINOUMEN; the sense you're  
suggesting would require the genitive AGGELWN.

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/




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