[B-Greek] Ephesians 2:1
rhutchin at aol.com
rhutchin at aol.com
Thu Jul 30 21:47:04 EDT 2009
Iver,
I always enjoy your comments even when I don't like them. Some reaction on my part.
1. I take Paul to be very specific and particular in his writings. I don't ordinarily think he would use a sentence fragment and do not easily go in that direction. It's a nice hypothesis. When I asked whether the newer translation was a correct translation, I was actually asking if the translation accurately reflected the Greek text in a grammatical sense. I take your answer to be that it does not.
2. To me, the issue is what to do with a sentence fragment and this is made somewhat difficult because so much other stuff is thrown in. However, I don't like what KJV did because hO DE QEOS in v4 seems to require a contrast with that which has gone before it. In my mind, KJV has it that God quickened you who were dead but then God quickened us when we were dead. What kind of argument is that and what point would Paul be arguing? I agree with you that Paul wants to establish "your"
sinfulness and does so elaborately but I see this allowing him to transition to our sinfulness or from hUMAS in v1 to hHMAS in v4-5 (so that the quickening applies to us but not until his argument reaches a conclusion in v5).
3. I also have difficulty going from hUMAS in v1 to hHMAS in v4-5. Is Paul saying, You guys were dead in sin but God loved us even with us being dead in sin so He ... Why not say, WE, in v1?
Why the confusion (to me, at last)? If Paul means to identify the hUMAS in v1 as part of the church in 1:22, then he can transition to hHMAS in v5 because we are now all one big happy family.
Than you for your comments but I am still flummoxed about this sentence fragment and what Paul intended. Given the compexity of the passage, I suspect that this issue had been the subject of much discussion among Paul and his companions and this passage sprang up once Paul had organized his thoughts on this important issue leaving the reader to dissect it and drain everything out of it.
Roger Hutchinson
-----Original Message-----
From: Iver Larsen <iver_larsen at sil.org>
To: b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org; rhutchin at aol.com
Sent: Thu, Jul 30, 2009 2:44 am
Subject: Re: [B-Greek] Ephesians 2:1
----- Original Message -----
From: <rhutchin at aol.com>
To: <b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: 29. juli 2009 20:26
Subject: [B-Greek] Ephesians 2:1
> We have in Ephesians 2:1--
>
> KAI hUMAS ONTAS NEKROUS TOIS PARAPTWMASIN KAI TAIS hAMARTIAIS hUMWN...
>
> This passage appears to be a sentence fragment in search of something to
> attach itself.? KJV addressed this by going all the way down to v5 to find a
> subject for the verse (which seems, to me, to make a Greek argument very
> difficult to follow).? More recent translations have opted to translate it as,
> "You were dead," thus erasing what, in the Greek, appea
rs to be a fragment.
>
> So, is the passage in v1 a sentence fragment (or are the modern translations
> correct to have, "You were dead")?
Yes, it is a sentence fragment which needs a finite verb to be complete and that
is why it is repeated with small variations in v. 5:
ὄντας ἡμᾶς νεκροὺς τοῖς παραπτώμασιν
ONTAS hHMAS NEKROUS TOIS PARAPTWMASIN
In v. 5 the sentence is completed as planned by:
συνεζωοποίησεν τῷ Χριστῷ SUNEZWOPOIHSEN TWi CRISTWi
The accusatives hUMAS and hHMAS must be the objects for SUNEZWOPOIHSEN, so it is
likely that v. 1 was construed with v. 5b in mind, but then Paul got carried
away and added a lot of descriptions about the sinfulness of people and then the
mercy of God in vs. 2-4.
Before Paul comes to the main verb in 5b, he wants to establish our/your
sinfulness rather elaborately and also establish the merciful love of God for us
in contrast to and in the midst of that sinfulness. With these two facts as
background, God made us alive together with Christ.
What modern translations do is a matter of translation style and it does not
tell us anything about the Greek structure. NET tries to indicate the fragment
by using ...
at the end of v. 3. To ask if a translation is "correct" is a
translation question, not a Greek grammar question.
>
> Could 2:1 be the end of the argument expressed at the end of chapter 1 in
> v22-23 and could it then be read as "which is his body...even you,..."?
No, I don't think that is possible.
> Is there a grammatical resolution to v1 or is this an issue only in my
> intellectually challenged mind?
Why not allow Paul to use sentence fragments? After all, he must have
spoken/dictated the letter, and sentence fragments are common in spoken
language.
Iver Larsen
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