[B-Greek] "Your faith and hope are in God" (1 Pet. 1:21)

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Wed Apr 18 13:12:55 EDT 2007


On Apr 18, 2007, at 12:46 PM, Webb wrote:

> TOUS DI AUTOU PISTOUS EIS QEON
>
> TON EGEIRANTA AUTON EK NEKRWN
>
> KAI DOXAN AUTWi DONTA
>
> hWSTE THN PISTIN hUMWN KAI ELPIDA EINAI EIS QEON
>
>
>
> Question: Before I looked at it closely in Greek, I'd always  
> assumed that
> this is saying that the people's faith is ultimately in God-reading  
> the "so
> that" as a logical "so that", rather than a causal "so that". But I'm
> starting to think that the last phrase here is the equivalent of
>
>
>
> hINA THN PISTIN hUMWN KAI ELPIDA Hi/WSIN EIS QEON
>
>
>
> Sometimes hINA and hWSTE seem to straddle the telic/purposive and
> ecbatic/resultive senses, and I'm wondering if this is one of them- 
> whether
> Peter is saying that God has raised Jesus from the dead and given  
> him glory
> so that (and with the end result that) you would come to believe in  
> God.
>
> Or is it as I had always assumed-that Peter is saying that belief  
> in Christ
> ultimately resolves to belief in God? Or??

I think "OR" is just about right here.  Koine Greek has ceased to  
observe
any clear distinction between purpose and result constructions. Jerry
Reimer has just remarked regarding adnominal genitive phrases, so here
we may well think that subjective factors are likely to decide our  
preference
for reading a particular construction as one of purpose or one of  
result.


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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