[B-Greek] Rev 20:4 KRIMA judgment

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Tue Oct 24 06:45:54 EDT 2006


On Oct 24, 2006, at 12:14 AM, Oun Kwon wrote:

> I need your help clarify
>
> Rev 20:4a
>
>   KAI EIDON QRONOUS KAI EKAQISAN EP' AUTOUS
>   KAI KRIMA EDOQH AUTOIS
>
> What is basis of understanding KRIMA as 'authority of judgment' as in
> most of English translations?  (I wonder what would it mean by it.
> Are they supposed to judge people such as those dead ones as in 20:12?
>   The saints may be priests but do we have any text supporting them to
> be judges?) Is this understanding from Greek itself or from
> (scholarly) opinion?
>
> Someone suggested it as 'judgment on them which is for their favor'.
> This seems plausible.

I suppose you got "authority of judgment" from BDAG #3: "action or  
function of a judge, judging, judgment" -- if not, that's where you  
ought to have looked and that's where you ought to have begun your  
investigation, rather than in commentaries. KRIMA is a -MA nominal  
formation built upon the verbal root and a nominal element meaning  
something like 'result/outcome of action." -MA is from the same proto- 
IE root yielding like-meaning Latin verbal nouns in -MENTUM and -MEN.  
KRIMA is what hOI KRINONTES bring about, and for that reason KRIMA is  
what they do, the function that they perform.

The odd thing, in terms of the Greek phraseology here, is the want of  
a subject of EKAQISAN beyond the implicit "they" of the verbal ending.

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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