[B-Greek] Genitive in Romans 6:6c

yancywsmith yancywsmith at sbcglobal.net
Thu Jul 13 13:38:18 EDT 2006


On Jul 13, 2006, at 3:40 AM, Iver Larsen wrote:

I want to thank Elizabeth, Iver and Harold for their thoughtful  
responses.
Thank you for your thoughtful and helpful response, you have got me  
thinking, even if in the end I don't fully agree

It is interesting that out of four interpreters, we have three  
interpretations of SWMA in Rom 6:6c

1. Elizabeth's and Iver's that it is NOT the human body, but either  
roughly or exactly hO PALAIOS ANQRWPOS, and should be translated  
something like "a life of sin."
2. Harold seems to think that SWMA is the human body, but did not  
specify in which sense, would it be fair to assume that it is the  
human body "insofar as it is characterized by sin"?
3. My view, that I am trying on for size, that it is the human body  
as a creation of God. However, this does not rule out its use as a  
metonym, just that, in this case it is qualified by hAMARTIAS. I have  
no dispute with seeing SWMA in Romans as a metonym for the human  
being, created by God for immortality, but weakened through slavery  
to sin to the point of mortality. My view is closer to Harold's  
insofar as both of us see SWMA as referring to the human body.

> [Iver] In this verse SWMA is qualified by THS hAMARTIAS, and it is  
> quite parallel to SWMA TOU QANATOU in Rom 7:24. In the
> context that Paul is speaking into, the word SWMA was as a metonymy  
> for the cravings and desires of a human being. In
> modern Western society, we rarely make that connection, because for  
> us the mind is paramount. So, I would prefer to
> render SWMA by "life" in these kinds of contexts. Therefore, SWMA  
> THS hAMARTIAS describes a "life of sin" or "life
> characterised by sinning" and SWMA TOU QANATOU "life of death" or  
> "life that leads to death". And here "death" is not
> limited to physical death.
>
Since you appeal to Rom 7:24, and "body of this death" has also  
sounded strange to my ears, I wonder if here we should read, "Who  
shall deliver me from this body, from this death? Taking the genitive  
as an abstract appositive. But this is not essential.


> [Iver] In Rom 12:1, it is not our "physical bodies" that we are  
> supposed to offer to God, but our whole lives.
I would agree here if you said, "In Rom 12:1, it is not SIMPLy our  
"physical bodies" that we are supposed to offer to God, etc."  
However, I find it difficult to believe that it does not include  
mainly our body as created by God and the things we do with it.

> [Iver] NCV translates: "I beg you to offer your lives as a living  
> sacrifice to him." The literal versions obscure the meaning,
> when they keep the word "body" in English.

I prefer the translation "body" because of it concreteness, but I  
think that you are right that, given our western dissociation of  
"mind/body," some readers might think that body excludes the life  
that one lives with the body.

>
>>
>> After thinking about it a bit more I see that Paul uses KATARGEW
>> elsewhere with similar meaning in conjunction with the ablatival
>> genitive.
>
> [Iver] Where does he do that?
>
The obiter dictum was the following, which you rule out of bounds  
because of the presence of APO, I was simply giving it as an example  
of KATARGEW qualified adverbially by the genitive, which it still  
would be with our without the APO. It is simply less ambiguous with APO.

>> Perhaps the phrase with KATARGEW and APO and the ABLATIVAL
>> genitive in Rom 7:3, where "if the husband dies, [the wife] is
>> released from the law about the husband" is a good parallel to this
>> one. EAN DE APOQANHi hO ANHR, KATARGHTAI APO TOU NOMOU TOU ANDROS.

I intended 7:3 to be such an example, but you rule it out because of  
the presence of APO. Of course Theodoret, a native Greek speaker  
seems to have though otherwise.

> [Iver] It is not parallel, because here the APO is crucial, and  
> there is no APO in Rom 6:6. KATARGEW with APO means to be
> released from (the authority of) what the noun in the preposition  
> refers to. The authority of the noun referent is
> annulled, no longer in effect.

I heartily agree with your interpretation of Rom 7:3, but disagree  
that the presence of APO is crucial. It is only crucial in a  
rhetorical sense to this discussion. I.e. there would be no  
discussion of the crux if Rom 6:6c read hINA KATARGHQHi TO SWMA APO  
THS hAMARTIAS. My musing was that the phrase can be taken either way,  
though I admit that the most natural reading is to take THS  
hHAMARTIAS with SWMA. This raises two points, one grammatical and one  
related to lexical semantics and context. The grammatical question  
concerns whether the genitive can do the same work without APO as it  
does with APO. I suppose you mean to say that APO is NOT optional  
with KATARGEW and the genitive. I.e. that in Koine Greek it would be  
impossible or at least highly improbable that a genitive with  
KATARGEW would be ablatival. Would you extend that reasoning beyond  
KATARGEW?

The second question concerns Paul's use of SWMA in the broader  
context of Romans, and even further in his other letters, which is  
probably less important. Is there a narrative framework of assumption  
that helps give meaning to Paul's use of the term SWMA, or do we just  
merrily translate and consider the options as presented by Louw and  
Nida or BDAG? The question in Rom 6:6 has caused me to look more  
closely at whether there is any coherence in Paul's use of the term  
or not from start to finish in Romans.

In Rom 1:24 the failure to acknowledge God as creator and worship the  
creature instead led to the "dishonoring of their SWMATA" and death  
(1:27). Here SWMA refers to the body as a creation of God, good in  
its purpose and beginning, but now mortal and enslaved to sin, the  
effect of being "handed over."

In Rom 4:19 Abraham recognizes that his SWMA [HDH] NENEKRWMENON, was  
[as good as] dead already. The linkage of the promise to Abraham with  
his "dead body" links the fulfillment of the promise to the  
resurrection, which is a reversal of the curse incurred by all  
sinners, Jew and non-Jew in Rom 1-3:20. This is a subtle point, but  
it shows the progenitor of the Jews as under the same curse as the  
Gentiles.

Rom 6:6, the "body of sin" passage, which I take in this way: The old  
man [Adam, and each of us as we relive his life of disobedience] was  
crucified together [with Christ] so that our body [as we were created  
by God] might be released from sin with the result that it no longer  
is a slave to sin. I see the body as the "mortal body," created by  
God for immortality but weakened and brought under the curse of death  
through sin. The following  verses show how believers must practice  
obedience to Christ in hopes of resurrection and in view of God's  
abundant grace.

Rom 6:12 "Do not continue to allow sin to rule over TWi QNHTWi hUMWN  
SWMATI 'your {pl} mortal body' with the result that you go on being  
slaves to its desires." Here, Paul counsels the imperatival side of  
what he described in narrative terms in verse 6, 7. Still, what is in  
view is the human body, albeit as metonym for the entire life lived  
through the body along with its desires, etc, but as created by God  
and weakened by sin. It is now "released from sin" but continues to  
be a locus of conflict between sin and righteousness but has the hope  
of experiencing resurrection life as a motive for obedience. There is  
not hint of a "dead body of sin" but of a "mortal body," a very  
different creature.

Rom 7:4 "you died through the body, SWMATOS, of Christ," that is,  
through identification with the crucified body of Jesus, the Messiah.  
The teaching about baptism into Christ's death is the background of  
this phrase. It might be appropriate to comment that the resurrected  
SWMA is indeed the same sort of body that the creator God envisioned  
for humanity, but Paul is here placing emphasis on the Romans  
indentification with the crucified SWMA to make his point about their  
freedom from the Law as well as their freedom from the domination of  
sin which reigns in the old world of Adam, the prototype of hO  
PALAIOS ANQRWPOS.

Rom 7:24 the "body of death" passage. EK TOU SWMATOS TOU QANATOU  
TOUTOU is most likely simply the human being as created by God but  
now mortal and struggling unsuccessfully to overcome sin. Whether the  
referent here is to all humans before knowing Christ, Gentiles  
struggling to keep the Jews law before knowing Christ, mature  
Christians in their struggle against sin is irrelevant to the question.

Rom 8:10 the SWMA is dead because of sin but the S/spirit is life  
because of righteousness. I see no reason to take SWMA in any other  
way than it has been heretofore used, as the human body or being as  
created by God to be immortal but weakened to mortality because of  
sin, but now with the hope of resurrection life because of the  
resurrection of Christ and the presence of the Holy Spirit.

Rom 8:11 the same, now explicit.

Rom 8:13 "If you live according to the SARKA, you will die, but if  
you put to death the practices of the SWMA by the Spirit you will live."
Here I see SWMA as meaning, essentially, the human being or body as  
created by God but weakened to mortality because of sin. This would  
also the meaning of SARKA, though I am sure Paul can expand the  
meaning of SARKA in various ways.

Rom 8:23 "we await the adoption as sons, the redemption of our our  
bodies." This illustrates, again, the narrative connection of SWMA in  
Rom. It is the body or human being as created by God to be immortal,  
but now weakened to the point of mortality by its slavery to sin. The  
reversal of this problem is a symbol of the reversal of the  
subjection to frustration of the entire creation. So, SWMA also  
stands as representative of the creation and its redemption, or  
release from slavery to sin and death, represents and "embodies" this  
broader hope. The death of the "Old Man," i.e. the Adamic human being  
[hO PALAIOS ANQRWPOS] at the cross fits into this narrative structure  
as the precursor to the release of the body from slavery to sin and  
death, which is already foreshadowed in Rom 6:6c.

Rom 12:1 The SWMA, "body" or human being as created by God but  
weakened to the point of mortality by sin can now be presented to God  
(through their connection to the body of Christ through  
identification with his death) as an acceptable sacrifice because of  
the sanctifying presence of the Spirit. This is one of the ways that  
believers in Paul's law free Gospel can "fulfill the law" without  
practicing the law, one of the essential problems Paul faces as he  
writes the Romans, who seem to have had serious misgivings about his  
law free gospel, see Tobin, The Rhetoric of Paul in its Contexts.

Rom 12:4, 5 SWMA here means physical body, but is used metaphorically  
for the entire community as related to Christ and thus to one another.

In view of this broader context, I see every reason to take "SWMA" in  
Rom 6:6c as the human body standing for the human being as created by  
God for immortality but weakened to immortality through its bondage  
to sin. hO PALAIOS ANQRWPOS I take to be a reference to Adam as  
representing a spiritual or abstract concept of human life lived in  
disobedience to God. It appears that the battleground for the  
individual, the community, and the broader creation in the struggle  
for the inbreaking new creation is the human body or human being  
liberated from sin by Christ but still mortal and susceptible to sin,  
but now strengthened by the presence of the Spirit and the hope of  
immortal life in the transformed body and new creation.

Yancy


Yancy Smith, Ph.D. candidate
yancywsmith at sbcglobal.net
Y.W.Smith at tcu.edu
5636 Wedgworth Road
Fort Worth, TX 76133
817-361-7565





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