[B-Greek] Construing 1 Peter 3:7 (was "ASQENESTERWi SKEUEI in 1 Peter 3:7")
Iver Larsen
iver_larsen at sil.org
Tue Jul 28 03:17:01 EDT 2009
----- Original Message -----
From: "Carl Conrad" <cwconrad2 at mac.com>
To: "Iver Larsen" <iver_larsen at sil.org>
Cc: "B-Greek B-Greek" <b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: 27. juli 2009 15:14
Subject: Construing 1 Peter 3:7 (was "ASQENESTERWi SKEUEI in 1 Peter 3:7")
The text in question is 1 Peter 3:7:
Οἱ ἄνδρες ὁμοίως, συνοικοῦντες κατὰ
γνῶσιν ὡς ἀσθενεστέρῳ σκεύει τῷ
γυναικείῳ, ἀπονέμοντες τιμὴν ὡς
καὶ συγκληρονόμοις χάριτος ζωῆς εἰς
τὸ μὴ ἐγκόπτεσθαι τὰς προσευχὰς
ὑμῶν.
[hOI ANDRES hOMOIWS, SUNOIKOUNTES KATA GNWSIN hWS ASQENESTERWi SKEUEI
TWi GUNAIKEIWi, APONEMONTES TIMHN hWS SUGKLHRONOMOIS CARITOS ZWHS EIS
TO MH
EGKOPTESQAI TAS PROSEUCAS hUMWN.]
<snip>
[CC:]
Upon reading Iver's remarks here, I am more than halfway inclined to
move over to his analysis, although aspects of it are troubling still.
There seems to me something excessive in the two hWS + dative
expressions here, reminding one of the manneristic colloquialism
punctuating some U.S. teenage talk: "It's like, you know, like ... "
They do seem to serve a purpose here, but they obscure the syntactic
complement of the two verbs, the dative that both SUNOIKOUNTES and
APONEMONTES TIMHN would seem to require. Some earlier versions (e.g.
KJV, RSV, DRC) evidently understood the complement of SUNOIKOUNTES as
an implicit GUNAIXI(N) and construed hWS ASQENESTERWi SKEUEI with
APONEMONTES TIMHN -- as did Oun in his earlier post in an earlier
phase of this thread -- in the sense, "allotting honor to the feminine
as a weaker vessel"-- and finally taking hWS SUGKLHRONOMOIS CARITOS
ZWHS either as appositional to TWi GUNAIKEIWi or to the supposedly
implicit GUNAIXI(N).
<snip>
To me the most troubling feature of the whole construction is TWi
GUNAIKEIWi. Why a neuter substantive ("the feminine/womanly/wifely
thing")? Is it really the dative complement of SUNOIKOUNTES and must
we really understand hWS ASQENESTERWi SKEUEI adverbially (husbands
live together 'understandingly' with the womanly/wifely thing because
it is a weaker vessel?
If this really is a neuter substantive, it seems odd;
<snip>
Or is the neuter adjectival form chosen because ASQENESTERWi SKEUEI is
neuter? And if so, then why shouldn't TWi GUNAIKEIWi be understood as
an attributive adjective? -- as I was originally inclined to suppose?
Perhaps SKEUEI TWi GUNAIKEIWi is the dative complement to SUNOIKOUNTES
as well as to APONEMONTES TIMHN, in which case the hWS should be
construed only with ASQENESTERWi. It does seem to me that KATA GNWSIN
must be seen in conjunction with hWS ASQENESTERWi SKEUEI:
"consideration" is appropriate in view of the greater weakness/
vulnerability involved. In that case, we'd have something like,
"husbands sharing existence with (their) feminine/wifely vehicle in an
understanding way (since it is weaker/more-vulnerable), attributing
worth to (it/them) as co-heirs of the grace of life ... "
IL:
I like your last rendering and I don't think that the two hWS clauses are
excessive since each of them is supporting its own verb. It may be helpful to
explicate the deep structure which I assume lies behind the text we have:
hOI ANDRES hOMOIWS, SUNOIKOUNTES
KATA GNWSIN hWS ASQENESTERWi SKEUEI
TWi GUNAIKEIWi [SKEUEI],
APONEMONTES TIMHN [TAIS GUNAIXI hUMWN]
hWS SUGKLHRONOMOIS CARITOS ZWHS
When Peter uses TWi GUNAIKEIWi SKEUEI rather than simply TAIS GUNAIXI hUMWN, he
is emphasizing the femininity and contrasting it to the masculinity. The use of
SKEUOS to represent a wife reflects the culture of the time, which looked at the
woman/wife as an instrument, almost as a possession, of the man, and certainly
weaker. Paul also uses TO hEAUTOU SKEUOS in 1 Thes 4:4 for a wife/woman.
Peter is then fronting the reason for staying with the wife in a considerate
way, namely because she is ASQENESTERON SKEUOS. Since SKEUEI now occurs in the
surface structure before the SKEUEI that GUNAIKEIWi modifies, the second is left
implicit to avoid unnecessary repetition. If the hWS clause had come after TWi
GUNAIKEIWi SKEUEI, it would have been simply hWS ASQENESTERWi without the SKEUEI
repeated (as you have in the English rendering above).
It is also easy to supply the wives as the implicit dative object for
APONEMONTES, and the second hWS clause naturally gives the reason for treating
the wife with honour/value. This is where Peter goes against secular culture
just as Paul has declared that in Christ there is no value difference between
man/husband and woman/wife. Because they both have an equal share in the "life
of grace", the man must not (ab)use the wife. That such an admonition to value
her is necessary is precisely because it is against the normal cultural
practices at the time.
Iver Larsen
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