[B-Greek] TI in 1 Cor 3:5

Ian Scott iscott at tyndale.ca
Thu Jan 31 15:28:11 EST 2008


Hi folks,
 
I'm working through 1 Cor 3 with a class and it occurred to me that there is an ambiguity in the opening TI of 3:5 that is not usually recognized (at least not in the literature I'm familiar with). It's usually translated (and accented) as an interrogative pronoun, "what?" But could it be a simple indefinite pronoun, "something?" In that case we would take TI as the predicate of the clause, rather than the interrogative subject. The resulting translation would be "Is Paul, then, something (i.e., significant)?" I suspect that this is not usually entertained because TI at the opening of a question is usually interrogative, but is there any reason it could not simply be indefinite? In favor of that reading I notice that Paul's statement in 3:7 seems like a direct answer to the question of 3:5 - - "neither the planter nor the waterer is anything (ESTIN TI) . . ."
 
Cheers,
 
Ian
 
Ian W. Scott, Ph.D. (McMaster)
Assistant Professor of New Testament
Tyndale Seminary
Toronto, Canada
email: iscott at tyndale.ca 
url: http://www.ian-w-scott.com ( http://www.ian-w-scott.com/ )
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Implicit Epistemology in the Letters of Paul: Story, Experience, and the Spirit (WUNT II/205; Tubingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006). ( http://www.tyndale.ca/~iscott/main/viewpage.php?pid=67 )
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The Online Critical Pseudepigrapha
http://www.purl.org/net/ocp



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