[B-Greek] ASQENESTERWi SKEUEI in 1 Peter 3:7 revised

Carl Conrad cwconrad2 at mac.com
Thu Jul 23 07:56:52 EDT 2009


Proofreading is embarrassing -- discovering that one's nominativus is  
pendens.

On Jul 23, 2009, at 6:07 AM, Carl Conrad wrote:

>
> On Jul 22, 2009, at 6:02 PM, Mitch Larramore wrote:
>
>> I had only mentioned this post by Mark Wilson as an illustration,
>> but one of the reasons I think it is so good is that it rejects the
>> earlier commentaries which have obviously been unable to offer any
>> explanation. [Also, I don't think you will find a lot of earlier
>> extra-biblical Greek examples of this 'weaker SKEUEI.' I would look
>> for the nuances of ASQENESTERWi by itself.
>>
>> But in the immediately preceding verses, Peter is talking about the
>> INNER beauty of the woman. The reason I understood Mark to be saying
>> the "vulnerability" was 'positive' is because it is being viewed as
>> part of the woman's INNER beauty. The woman does not possess a
>> weaker 'character' than man, and the focus of a woman's physical
>> weakness by most commentaries leads to dead ends. No, I think Mark's
>> idea, a bit uncomfortable apparently due to his way of thinking, is
>> heading in the right direction.
>>
>> This is exactly how "break throughs" happen, if you ask me. A guy
>> like Mark comes along and redirects our thinking, and then scholars
>> come along and do the hard work of perfecting this idea or
>> redirecting it into some other direction, but still being carried by
>> the original momentum gathered by the out-of-the-box first thinker.
>> He had obviously done some groundbreaking work.
>
> Evidently this notion of the adjective ASQENHS having the sense of
> "vulnerable" and having a "positive" connotation

has struck several as an attractive suggestion.

> . I'm rather dubious
> about this notion myself. On the one hand, I would agree that
> "vulnerable" is one common idea associated with the adjective, but I
> question that vulnerability is ever really conceived as something good
> in the ancient view. In particular, it seems to me that the notion of
> "fragile, delicate femininity" is closer to modern romantic, even
> Victorian conceptions of womanhood than to ordinary ancient
> sensibilities.
>
> Mitch is right to call attention to the immediately preceding context:
> verses 1-6 are addressed to wives and they do explicitly point to
> inner beauty, contrasting external sorts of KOSMOS (coiffure, jewelry,
> flashy clothes  and the like) with hO KRUPTOS THS KARDIAS ANQRWPOS EN
> TWi AFQARTWi TOU PRAEWS KAI hHSUCIOU PNEUMATOS (v. 4). But I rather
> think that "imperishable gentleness and peaceableness" are viewed as
> cultivated traits rather than "natural" feminine attributes. Verse 7,
> on the other hand, begins a new exhortation to husbands regarding
> behavior toward wives, and here's where we encounter the phrase
> ASQENESTERWi SKEUEI. Mitch suggests that in researching the adjective
> ASQENHS we should ignore the word SKEUOS and focus on the adjective
> alone, but I rather think that the word SKEUOS has much to do with how
> we can understand the adjective ASQENHS when used with it; SKEUOS
> means, fundamentally, "utensil." BDAG offers as the first sense, "a
> material object used to meet some need in an occupation or other
> responsibility" and a third sense, with reference to a person, "a
> human being exercising a function, instrument, vessel ". I researched
> the noun a few years ago in connection with the phrase in 1 Thess 4:4
> TO hEAUTOU SKEUOS KTASQAI (http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/b-greek/2002-July/021820.html
> ). I think that ASQENESTERWi when qualifying SKEUEI must must say
> something about the quality of the SKEUOS as a "human instrument."
>
> ASQENHS itself is given the essential sense in BDAG> "of that which
> lacks strength: ‘weak, powerless’. BDAG's categorization and
> subcategorization of senses in which the adjective is used is pretty
> thorough, it seems to me, and, although "vulnerable" certainly does
> seem an appropriate synonym, I can't see anything in it that suggests
> a vulnerability that has a POSITIVE sense. So if ASQENESTERWi in 1
> Peter 3:7 is supposed to suggest vulnerability in a positive sense,
> I'd like to see some evidence supporting this view.
>
> Carl W. Conrad
> Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
>
>
>
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