[B-Greek] Rom 4:1

George F Somsel gfsomsel at yahoo.com
Tue Jul 21 05:58:33 EDT 2009


4 Τί οὖν ἐροῦμεν εὑρηκέναι Ἀβραὰμ τὸν προπάτορα ἡμῶν κατὰ σάρκα;2εἰ γὰρ Ἀβραὰμ ἐξ ἔργων ἐδικαιώθη, ἔχει καύχημα, ἀλλʼ οὐ πρὸς θεόν.
TI OUN EROUMEN hEURHKENAI ABRAAM TON PROPATORA hHMWN KATA SARKA? 2  EI GAR ABRAAM EC ERGWN EDIKAIWQH, EXEI KAUXHMA, ALL' OU PROS QEON.

The solution which you propose fails in my estimation precisely because there is no real connection between v. 1 and what follows (which I include above).  I would not read ABRAAM either as the subject of the infinitive nor as its object.  Instead I would understand it as an accusative of respect.  It would then read, "What shall we say we have found with respect to our physical ancestor Abraham?  For if Abraham was justified by works, he has a cause for boasting, but not about God."
 george
gfsomsel 


… search for truth, hear truth, 
learn truth, love truth, speak the truth, hold the truth, 
defend the truth till death.


- Jan Hus
_________ 




________________________________
From: Iver Larsen <iver_larsen at sil.org>
To: Yancy Smith <yancywsmith at sbcglobal.net>; Oun Kwon <kwonbbl at gmail.com>; greek B-Greek <b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Tuesday, July 21, 2009 12:58:00 AM
Subject: Re: [B-Greek] Rom 4:1
Sent: 20. juli 2009 23:34
Subject: Re: [B-Greek] Rom 4:1


The only analysis that makes sense to me is to take the sentence as a question 
consisting of two clauses where the second clause is the complement to EROUMEN:
"What, then, shall we say that Abraham, our human ancestor, has discovered?" 
Paul is here speaking to Jews who put a lot of emphasis on doing the "works of 
the Torah", but - he tells them - our venerable forefather Abraham had already 
discovered (only here is the verb found in the perfect tense) that he was 
accepted as being in right standing with God because of his faith, apart from 
works (CWRIS ERGWN, v. 6).

I am not afraid of challenging traditional analyses and exegeses, but one must 
make a solid case for it, and neither Lenski, Hays nor Wright have been able to 
do so.

I have now read the thread on this topic from October 2001, where Lenski is 
cited as supporting your number 3. His arguments are quite unconvincing, and 
Steve Lo Vullo made some good points in his responses on the list.

Iver Larsen 

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