[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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