[B-Greek] ACTS 15:1 TWi EQEI TWi MWUSEWS

Elizabeth Kline kline_dekooning at earthlink.net
Mon Jul 31 13:43:09 EDT 2006


Thank you, Randall and Carl for your contributions.

A few comments. I have extracted several items to focus the issue.


On Jul 31, 2006, at 12:42 AM, Randall Buth wrote:

> Meaning, of course, is negotiated within a system and one way to
> approach a somewhat unclear context is to consider what was not  
> chosen.


> #1: PERITMHQHTE 'you would be circumcised' could have stood alone
> without any serious ambiguity. (Josephus APION 1:169 has
> PERITEMNONTAI ... TA AIDOIA, where the non-Jewish context benefits
> from specifying what gets cut-around, here accusative/AITIATIKH, TA
> AIDOIA 'shame-parts')

Yes and this reinforces #3.


> #3: No preposition is added. The extra precision available through
> using explicit prepositions was not considered necessary.

For example KATA with an accusative.

> #7: we are left with a general relationship between 'to be
> circumcised' and Mosaic practice. [From background knowledge we and
> the readers should know that circumcision is part of Mosaic practice
> and it is partially described in Mosaic books and in oral Jewish
> teaching.]

This is exactly the point I was hoping someone would make. "... a  
general relationship between 'to be circumcised' and Mosaic practice."

My contention is that overly specific labels "dative of rule" give a  
misleading analysis since they imply that the author intended to nail  
something down with the dative case whereas the author actually  
intended to leave it open-ended assuming that the reader could supply  
from their own knowledge what was only suggested in the text. I think  
this somehow relates to relevance theory but it has been a few years  
and I am foggy on that topic.

Elizabeth Kline







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