[B-Greek] Rom 4:1
Carl Conrad
cwconrad2 at mac.com
Mon Jul 20 14:27:39 EDT 2009
On Jul 20, 2009, at 1:21 PM, Iver Larsen wrote:
> While reading N.T. Wright I came to his peculiar understanding of
> Rom 4:1.
>
> The text is:
>
> Τί οὖν ἐροῦμεν εὑρηκέναι Ἀβραὰμ
> τὸν προπάτορα ἡμῶν κατὰ σάρκα;
> TI OUN EROUMEN hEURHKENAI ABRAAM TON PROPATORA hHMWN KATA SARKA?
>
> He says that the following translation "works extremely well with
> the Greek":
> "What then shall we say? Have we found Abraham to be our forefather
> according to
> the flesh?"
>
> Can anyone explain to me how he can suggest "we" as implicit subject
> for the
> perfect infinitive? I assume that Wright is not a member of b-Greek,
> but maybe
> some one else has accepted his exegesis and can defend it?
>
> How can he cut the sentence into two with an indicative form of
> "found" when the
> infinitive depends on EIPON? And how does that work extremely well
> with the
> Greek?
I would not advocate that reading of the text, but I see no reason why
the text couldn't be punctuated (as a question) after TI OUN or after
EROUMEN..
TI OUN as a stand-alone introduction to a rhetorical question is by no
means uncommon (BDAG 1.a.β.ה. elliptical expressions:). If
after EROUMEN, one would still say, I think, that an elliptical
repeated EROUMEN governs the infinitive hEURHKENAI, no subject of the
infinitive needing to be stated since it's identical with that of
EROUMEN. Moreover, I see no real objection to understanding TON
PROPATORA hHMWN KATA SARKA as predicative to ABRAAM.
I would suppose that his version, "What then shall we say? Have we
found Abraham to be our forefather according to the flesh?", is not
intended to be literal, a literal version being rather, "What then
shall we say? [Shall we say that] we have found Abraham [to be] our
forefather according to the flesh?"
I don't see any reason why that isn't a legitimate way of punctuating
and reading the text, although, as I stated at the outset, it is not a
way I would advocate.
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
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