[B-Greek] genitives in Gal 3:2 (corrected)

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Mon Jun 26 04:51:41 EDT 2006


I want to correct a mis-formulation in the opening of the second  
paragraph of my response.

On Jun 26, 2006, at 4:42 AM, Carl W.Conrad wrote:

>
> On Jun 25, 2006, at 6:05 PM, kgraham0938 at comcast.net wrote:
>
>> TOUTO MONON QELW MAQEIN AF hUMWN EX ERGWN NOMOU TO PNEUMA ELABETE H
>> EX AKOHS PISTEWS
>>
>> If you had to catagories EX ERGWN NOMOU what type of genitive would
>> NOMOU be?  And PISTEWS?
>
> categorize?
>
>>
>> I think PISTEWS is objective, but not sure about NOMOU.
>
> All genitives of nouns that qualify another noun are essentially
> alike in Greek: they function like adjectives explaining "what kind"
> of X (the head noun): the categorization doesn't really have much to
> do with usage in the Greek as with options for conversion of the
> sense of the Greek into a target language.  So what we are dealing
> with is a second genitive somehow characterizing the first: in EX
> ERGWN NOMOU it is "from law-works" or "from works of a law kind"; in
> EX AKOHS PISTEWS it is "from faith-hearing" or "from hearing of a
> faith kind."
>
> This is a difficult passage in that it is particularly difficult to
> pin down how the two genitives in EX AKOHS PISTEWS relate
> to each other. BDAG lists both two, the first
> ("hearing of faith") in the definition of AKOH 2: "hearing of faith
> (= that 'hearing ' which Christians call faith), the second in
> definition 4b: "EX AKOHS PISTEWS as the result of a message
> (proclamation) which elicited (only) faith." Although the former
> seems to be reflected in many traditional versions. But if PISTEWS
> tells us the nature of the "hearing," how does it characterize it?
> Not, I think, by way of definitiion or apposition (hearing that is
> faith) but by way of delimiting the AKOH (what is heard) as the kind
> of message/proclamation that produces belief.
>
> The only way that PISTEWS could be an "objective" genitive is as an
> indicator of what is heard: "hearing faith." I don't think that makes
> much sense. It would make MORE sense, it seems to me to understand
> AKOHS PISTEWS as 'believing what is heard." But I don't think that
> analysis of the phrase in terms of the so-called subcategories of the
> adnominal genitive is really very helpful. What is needed is an
> accurate determination of the sense of each noun in the phrase and
> then posing of the question, "What kind of HEARING/THING-HEARD is
> characterized or described by FAITH?"
>
> Carl W. Conrad
> Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
> 1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
> cwconrad2 at mac.com
> WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/
>
>
> ---
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Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad2 at mac.com
WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/





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