[B-Greek] Attraction of the Relative in Eph 2:10

yancywsmith at sbcglobal.net yancywsmith at sbcglobal.net
Mon Dec 14 04:12:56 EST 2009


> Question 1: In GNT I have it is hOIS οἷς not OIS οἶς. Can you clarify this
> for me?
I typed the accent wrong. Thanks.

> hOIS - is it not dative of reference? Why most take it as if accusative (God
> prepared works)?  As I see it, the text should be read as 'works for which
> God has prepared [us]'.  The object 'us' is implicit in the following hINA-
> clause (not merely tautological). See Abbott's Critcial Exegesis ICC
> commentaries Ephesians &
> Colossians<http://www.archive.org/details/criticalexegetic36abbouoft>.
> Also in Barnes' commentary and a few translations. If God prepared 'works' -
> what sort of works are we talking about?


I find it difficult to see οἷς as a masculine plural dative of reference. In the hINA clause the first person is functioning as subject, not object. In the main clause of the sentence the first person is also subject. It seems that the addition of hHMAS would be necessary to mark the first person as OBJECT of προητοίμασεν. It would seem that such a change of argument in the role of the subject would require hHMAS. 

I guess one of the more ticklish problems of this verse, which is definitely a crux interpretum is what the heck is "ἐν αὐτοῖς" doing? Is it referring back to good works? Looks like it can't be doing that directly, otherwise αὐτοῖς would be referring to any good works and not specifically the good works God prepared. 

I think the several cases presented in a previous post of NT writers behaving badly, unnecessarily strengthening their relatives with the pronoun αὐτός, seem to indicate a pattern of semitic influence in the formulating of relative clauses by certain writers in the NT. This case looks more like the ones I just referred to.  Rather, it is far more likely that οἷς either is simply referring back (and "attracted" to ἔργοις ἀγαθοῖς) or, more likely, οἷς begins a restrictive relative clause and it is a locative dative relative pronoun "in which" οἷς προητοίμασεν ὁ θεὸς. So ἵνα ἐν αὐτοῖς περιπατήσωμεν would function as the "direct object" of the verb, functioning like an infinitive construct phrase in Hebrew. It does not seem to be very elegant Greek.

Yancy Smith
yancywsmith at sbcglobal.net
Y.W.Smith at tcu.edu
yancy at wbtc.com
5636 Wedgworth Road
Fort Worth, TX 76133
817-361-7565






On Dec 14, 2009, at 12:31 AM, Oun Kwon wrote:

> Hy Yancy,
> 
> Two questions here - this is related to the my original positing on the same
> text {Dec 11 - [B-Greek] Eph 2:10 hOIS PROETOIMAZW} :
> 
> Question 1: In GNT I have it is hOIS οἷς not OIS οἶς. Can you clarify this
> for me?
> 
> Question 2: this is reiteration of my original question:
> 
> hOIS - is it not dative of reference? Why most take it as if accusative (God
> prepared works)?  As I see it, the text should be read as 'works for which
> God has prepared [us]'.  The object 'us' is implicit in the following hINA-
> clause (not merely tautological). See Abbott's Critcial Exegesis ICC
> commentaries Ephesians &
> Colossians<http://www.archive.org/details/criticalexegetic36abbouoft>.
> Also in Barnes' commentary and a few translations. If God prepared 'works' -
> what sort of works are we talking about?
> 
> Oun Kwon.
> 
> On Mon, Dec 14, 2009 at 12:36 AM, yancywsmith at sbcglobal.net <
> yancywsmith at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>> I think that the point of saying that the attraction is largely semantic
> and only loosely or potentially grammatical (conforming to rules of syntax)
> is really that attraction/assimilation does, potentially, say something
> regarding the thought process of the writer. For example, in the New
> Testament Greek relative clauses are sometimes appear to be assimilated
> according to semitic usage. The situation is further complicated in that
> Greek does not distinguish restrictive from unrestrictive relative clauses.
> It seems to me that Eph 2:10 is an example of a restrictive relative, not
> just any good works, but those good works God prepared before hand for us to
> walk in. That complicates the picture. Ephesians 2:10 is a particularly good
> example of how difficult this matter of attraction can be to sort out.
> Winer, in his Grammatik neutestamentlich Sprachidioms 24, 4 (p. 225) has an
> interesting discussion of this passage. Here is a translation (my German is
> not very good, so I will include the original text. Iver or another list
> member could do better.) To me, Winer seems to suggest that οἶς is not
> necessarily an example of attraction to the antecedent at all, which is why
> I suggested it is, rather, "attracted" to ἐν αὐτοῖς (which would not be not
> "attraction" at all):
>> 
>> κτισθέντες ... επὶ ἔργοις ἀγαθοῖς οἶς προητοίμασεν ὀ θεὸς ἵνα ἐν αὐτοῖς
> περιπατήσωμεν cannot mean (without attraction to the antecedent): for which
> God has prepared us, etc, since ἠμᾶς would not then be elided. But simple
> attraction is unacceptable: “the [works] which (οἶς = ἅ) God has prepared
> beforehand,” because the phrase  would then not construe with the phrase “we
> might walk in them”  that is, the good works need not be the works
> previously prepared. Therefore οἶς  (without attraction to the antecedent)
> should not therefore be masculine: we, for whom God has prepared them, to
> walk in them (Rüchert), taken in this way οἶς would be construed with ἐν
> αὐτοῖς = ἐν οἶς as in 22,7 (p. 200).  Thus (also) without attraction to the
> antecedent: "in which to walk God has prepared for us," or, more closely
> replicating the structure: "with regard to which God has prepared that we
> should walk in them."
>> 
> <clipped>
>> 
>> Yancy Smith, PhD
>> 
> ---
> B-Greek home page: http://www.ibiblio.org/bgreek
> B-Greek mailing list
> B-Greek at lists.ibiblio.org
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-greek




More information about the B-Greek mailing list