[B-Greek] hO QEOS in ROM. 1:28
Elizabeth Kline
kline_dekooning at earthlink.net
Wed May 14 14:26:04 EDT 2008
ROM. 1:28 KAI KAQWS OUK EDOKIMASAN TON QEON ECEIN EN EPIGNWSEI,
PAREDWKEN AUTOUS hO QEOS EIS ADOKIMON NOUN, ...
hO QEOS, omitted by the first hand of Codex Sinaiticus and
Alexandrinus, is syntactically unnecessary, see Fitzmyer (Rom. AB,
p289). The text would be more cohesive with a pronoun or just the
third person singular ending of PAREDWKEN. However, the fact that a
full noun phrase is not required introduces a certain level of
attention grabbing significance to the use of a full noun phrase. In
other words this is a 'marked' use of a full noun phrase in a context
where a pronoun or verb ending would have been adequate to encode the
agent[1] of PAREDWKEN.
Fitzmyer notes that hO QEOS is not required and he reduces it to a
pronoun in his translation. IMO this fails to take into account both
the mark use of a full noun phrase and the rhetorical significance of
the three repetitions of PAREDWKEN AUTOUS hO QEOS.
ROM. 1:24 DIO PAREDWKEN AUTOUS hO QEOS EN TAIS EPIQUMIAIS ...
ROM. 1:26 DIA TOUTO PAREDWKEN AUTOUS hO QEOS EIS PAQH ATIMIAS ...
ROM. 1:28 KAI KAQWS OUK EDOKIMASAN TON QEON ECEIN EN EPIGNWSEI,
PAREDWKEN AUTOUS hO QEOS EIS ADOKIMON NOUN ...
Elizabeth Kline
[1] Not everyone would agree with assigning the semantic role AGENT to
hO QEOS in this context. However, that is not the issue under
discussion here.
More information about the B-Greek
mailing list