[B-Greek] Matthew 16:18 - two questions

Carl Conrad cwconrad2 at mac.com
Tue Jul 22 06:19:36 EDT 2008


On Jul 20, 2008, at 12:30 AM, Eric S. Weiss wrote:

> Matthew 16:18 - KAGW DE SOI LEGW hOTI SU EI PETROS, KAI EPI TAUTHi THi
> PETRAi OIKODOMHSW MOU THN EKKLHSIAN KAI PULAI hADOU OU
> KATISCUSOUSIN AUTHS.
> ...
> 2. Re: the gates of hades not prevailing: While BDAG seems to view  
> the gates as being
> unable to defeat the church, is there a basis in the word meanings  
> for thinking that Jesus is
> saying that it is the church that will be attacking the gates of  
> hades (i.e., the power of
> death), and hades/death won't be able to withstand the church's  
> onslaught?


The "gates of Hades" will not put up a solid resistance against the  
"Ecclesia" -- but they certainly do seem to be able to withstand the  
assaults of speculation.
This has not been the longest thread we've had on B-Greek over the  
years, but it seems to me that it's been one of the most unproductive.  
While the verse is often quoted and is even engraved in Latin inside  
the dome of St. Peter's basilica in Rome, it is evident that its  
arcane depths have not yet been plumbed not convincingly, at least. I  
find that there are many occasions -- and this is one of them -- when  
I'm reminded of a snippet of two elegiac couplets constituting  
Fragment 34 of Xenophanes on the paucity of convincing solutions to  
some much-discussed questions. Here's how it appears in the standard  
reference work, Diels-Kranz, Fragmente der Vorsokratiker;
34  SEXT. adv. math. VII 49. 110 PLUT. aud. poet. 2 p. 17 E 	
  καὶ τὸ μὲν οὖν σαφὲς οὔτις ἀνὴρ  
ἴδεν οὐδέ τις ἔσται
  εἰδὼς ἀμφὶ θεῶν τε καὶ ἅσσα λέγω  
περὶ πάντων·
  εἰ γὰρ καὶ τὰ μάλιστα τύχοι  
τετελεσμένον εἰπών,
  αὐτὸς ὅμως οὐκ οἶδε· δόκος δ' ἐπὶ  
πᾶσι τέτυκται.

KAI TO MEN OUN SAFES OUTIS ANHR IDEN OUDE TIS ESTAI
EIDWS AMFI QEWN TE KAI hASSA LEGW PERI PANTWN;
EI GAR KAI TA MALISTA TUCOI TETELESMENON EIPWN
AUTOS hOMWS OUK OIDE: DOKOS D' EPI PASI TETUKTAI.

Here's my own (loose) take on this: "And as for perspicuity, nobody  
has seen it nor will there ever be any one who has knowledge about the  
gods and what I'm saying about everything; even if someone should  
happen to hit the nail right on the head with a statement, even so, he  
himself doesn't know it. Guesswork is what has turned up in every  
instance."

Pre-socratic phraseology, especially in those authors who wrote verse  
rather than prose (for the reason that verse is the traditional medium  
for Wisdom literature in Greek) is itself sometimes less than  
perspicuous. Use of the adjective SAFHS/ES (σαφής/ές) -- "clear,  
transparent, perspicuous" in the sense of "true" is characteristically  
early Greek, perhaps like our "self-evident." The last clause is  
particularly difficult/ambiguous. DOKOS (δόκος) does mean  
"opinion" or "fancy" (so LSJ); TETUKTAI (τέτυκται) as a perfect  
middle-passive of TEUCW (τεύχω) could mean "has been wrought" (if  
the verb is used in the sense of "make, produce") or "has fallen by  
chance" (if the verb here is understood as from the lemma TUGCANW  
(τυγχάνω). Then there's the question whether PASI (πᾶσι) in  
the phrase EPI PASI (ἐπὶ πᾶσι) should be understood as a  
masculine or as a neuter. Is every opinionator a guesser or is it  
every thing about which opinionators have opined that is guesswork.  
Looks like a case of "quot homines tot sententiae."

I'm not offering any hermeneutical theory or proposition of my own  
here. I just marvel at every fresh instance of questions about what is  
familiar -- especially in the Biblical text -- for which answers are  
not so readily found. I guess people don't readily confess that they  
are "stumped."

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)






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