[B-Greek] Construing 1 Peter 3:7 (was "ASQENESTERWi SKEUEI in 1 Peter 3:7")
Carl Conrad
cwconrad2 at mac.com
Tue Jul 28 07:29:27 EDT 2009
On Jul 28, 2009, at 3:17 AM, Iver Larsen wrote:
> ----- 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.
Thanks very much, Iver; the structure of this verse now seems a lot
more intelligible, even if the phasing seems a bit awkward, and I
think that the differences in English versions that Harold has cited
(I had looked at several of them to see what construction of the
textual elements they seemed to represent) reflect that awkwardness.
I might just note, with regard to the "normal cultural practices at
the time," that middle- and upper-class women iwere not so
infrequently educated and empowered to act individually. That's not
to say that our text doesn't indeed run counter to common practice.
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
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