[B-Greek] question about 2Cor 4:4
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Fri May 5 19:27:38 EDT 2006
On May 5, 2006, at 7:18 PM, Octavio Rodriguez wrote:
> 2 Corinthians 4:4
>
> EN hOIS hO QEOS TOU AIWNOS TOUTOU ETUFLWSEN TA NOHMATA TWN APISTWN
>
> The natural reading is "in whom the god of this world...".
> However Irenaeus in the Book III of "Against haereses" said :
>
> "For if any one read the passage thus-according to Paul's custom,
> as I show
> elsewhere, and by many examples, that he uses transposition of
> words-"In
> whom God," then pointing it off, and making a slight interval, and
> at the
> same time read also the rest [of the sentence] in one [clause], "hath
> blinded the minds of them of this world that believe not," he shall
> find out
> the true [sense]; that it is contained in the expression, "God hath
> blinded
> the minds of the unbelievers of this world." ....So therefore, in such
> passages(Galatians 3:19; 2Thessalonians 2:8,9), the *hyperbaton*
> must be
> exhibited by the reading, and the apostle's meaning following on,
> preserved;
> and thus we do not read in that passage, "the god of this world," but,
> "God," whom we do truly call God; and we hear [it declared of] the
> unbelieving and the blinded of this world, that they shall not
> inherit the
> world of life which is to come."
>
> I do not know if Irenaeus is right about greek grammar in this
> respect,
> because "such passages" that he quoted, did not have a genitive
> such as "tou
> X" after a nominative noun. I am not aware of an example in the Paul's
> writtings which fit with the Irenaeus statement.
>
> do you agree with me?, i would like read commentaries about it.
For my part, I cannot see how TOU AIWNOS TOUTOU could be expected to
qualify TA NOHMATA TWN APISTWN. I'll stick with the "natural" reading
here.
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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