[B-Greek] Titus 1:6, not in accusation of what?
Jeff Smelser
jeffsmelser at ntgreek.net
Fri Sep 2 10:10:24 EDT 2005
Thanks, Harold, for the comment.
Again, for any who may have forgotten the previous posts (after all,
more than a week has passed), the phrase under consideration is MH EN
KATHGORIAi ASWTIAS H ANUPOTAKTA (μὴ ἐν κατηγορίᾳ ἀσωτίας ἢ ἀνυπότακτα,
"not in accusation of profligacy or rebellious").
Now if I am right in supposing that only the genitive noun ASWTIAS is to
be connected with EN KATHGORIAi, the question might be asked why a mere
accusation of profligacy with regard to the children would be
disqualifying while only actual rebellion, and not merely an accusation
of rebellion, would be disqualifying.
Zerwick suggests the meaning of EN KATHGORIAi with a genitive is "not
liable to a charge of." That makes sense to me, and what I want to
suggest (and I'd like some feedback here, because I'm speculating with
little sense of the usage of KATHGORIA other than what I read in the
discussions in BDAG, LSJ, Moulton-Milligan, and the brief note by
Büchsel in TDNT) is that the preposition EN might suggest more than a
gratuitous accusation. The fact that one might be "in" accusation of
something suggests the accusation has sufficient basis to stand (hence
it might be said the accused is "liable" to the charge). If it were
completely unmerited, it would have been dismissed and the person who
had been accused could not rightly be said to remain "in accusation of"
something. Now that's really just speculation on my part regarding the
significance of the preposition here, but it seems likely to me. Any
thoughts?
The practical upshot would be that Paul doesn't mean to suggest that a
mere (groundless) accusation regarding a man's children is sufficient to
disqualify him even with regard to profligacy. Both in terms of
profligacy and rebelliousness, it would be the actual existence of the
characteristic that would be disqualifying.
My previous comments are below...
Jeff Smelser
www.ntgreek.net
www.centrevillechurchofchrist.org
Jeff Smelser wrote:
> It seems to me some translations miss it in Titus 1:6, but I'd like to
> run this by list members in the event I'm the one who is missing
> something. The phrase in question is MH EN KATHGORIAi ASWTIAS H
> ANUPOTAKTA (μὴ ἐν κατηγορίᾳ ἀσωτίας ἢ ἀνυπότακτα, "not in accusation
> of dissipation or rebellious").
>
> Some translations (those that I think miss it) take both ASWTIAS and
> ANUPOTAKTA as being governed by EN KATHGORIAi. But ASWTIAS is a gen.
> noun specifying the kind of accusation in view, while ANUPOTAKTA is an
> adjective, neuter acc., agreeing with TEKNA. So then I understand the
> text to indicate that the children shouldn't be accused of dissipation
> and they shouldn't be rebellious. That's the meaning rather than "not
> accused of dissipation or rebellion" (NAS), which construes ANUPOTAKTA
> as a noun and suggests that the point is the children shouldn't be
> open to accusation of either dissipation or rebellion.
>
> Any thoughts?
>
> Jeff Smelser
> www.ntgreek.net
> www.centrevillechurchofchrist.org
>
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