[B-Greek] Ephesians 1:4-5

Carl Conrad cwconrad2 at mac.com
Tue Sep 1 10:03:15 EDT 2009


On Aug 31, 2009, at 4:14 PM, Clayton Javurek wrote:

> Dear B-Greek,
>
> Does the grammar and syntax of Ephesians 1:4-5 suggest that the
> that the "exelexato hemas" and the "prohorisas hemas" and the "eis
> huiothesian"
> are all identical in class (A=B=C)? Or are the latter 2 classes B  
> and C
> identical to each other
> and are separate from A...(A,B=C)? Is the participle prohorisas  
> modal or
> supplemental to the
> main verb exelexato? Are only the prohorisas hemas tied to the eis
> huiothesian or is the eis huiothesian
> tied to both the exelexeto hemas and the prohorisas hemas?
>
> Thank you kindly for any insights you can offer me on this matter.

To me, at least, the phrasing of the question is not really clear;  
what is meant by asking or saying that these phrases, EXELEXATO hHMAS,  
PRORISAS hHMAS, and EIS hUIOQESIAN, are "identical in class"? Is it a  
question of whether these phrases mean the same thing? Or is it a  
question of how they function syntactically in relation to each other?  
I'm going to assume, rightly or wrongly, that the question is  
concerned with syntactic relationship of these phrases.

We ordinarily cite the Greek text of a passage we want to talk about:

Eph. 1:4 καθὼς ἐξελέξατο ἡμᾶς ἐν αὐτῷ  
πρὸ καταβολῆς κόσμου εἶναι ἡμᾶς  
ἁγίους καὶ ἀμώμους κατενώπιον  
αὐτοῦ ἐν ἀγάπῃ,  5 προορίσας ἡμᾶς  
εἰς υἱοθεσίαν διὰ Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ  
εἰς αὐτόν, κατὰ τὴν εὐδοκίαν τοῦ  
θελήματος αὐτοῦ,
[EPH. 1:4 KAQWS EXELEXATO hHMAS EN AUTWi PRO KATABOLHS KOSMOU EINAI  
hHMAS hAGIOUS KAI AMWMOUS KATENWPION AUTOU EN AGAPHi,  5 PROORISAS  
hHMAS EIS hUIOQESIAN DIA IHSOU CRISTOU EIS AUTON, KATA THN EUDOKIAN  
TOU QELHMATOS AUTOU,]

What really needs to be noted, although it is not so readily evident  
when one views the text f verses 4-5 in isolation from their context,  
is that these verses are part of a textual sequence that extends  
without any real interruption from verses 3 through 14. The editors of  
NA27/UBS4 mark new sentences beginning with EF' hWi at verses 7, 11,  
and 13, but these are rather arbitrary, in my opinion and that of some  
others.

In terms of its structure, this sequence in the first chapter of  
Ephesians has always seemed to me the single most frustrating passage  
in the GNT. It has always seemed to me to be comparable the phrases  
that I have heard uttered in sequence in a prayer that is comparable  
to a string of pearls od disparate character, some of the pearls being  
more or less like others, some decidedly different, but not forming a  
satisfactorily integrated whole. The problem is partly one of  
articulation: where do we punctuate so as to associate an element like  
EN AGAPHi with the preceding clause or with the participial phrase  
that immediately follows it? I confess that I have endevored on  
several occasions to diagram this whole sequence in order to visualize  
the syntactic relationships within it -- and haven't yet succeeded in  
working out a structure that I find wholly satisfying. I've always had  
the sensation, after working out such a diagram, that I have forced  
some square pegs into round holes or round pegs into square holes, so  
to speak.

All of which is to say that, IF verses 3 and 4 really did constitute  
an integral textual unit that is intelligible in its own right, THEN I  
might assert that the participle PROORISAS functions circumstantially  
to qualify EXELEXATO, clarifying the process the selection indicated  
by the finite verb; and I might assert also that EIS hUIOQESIAN  
indicates the purpose ("so as to adopt us" or result ("so that we were  
adopted") of the action indicated by that participle.

So, for what it's worth, there's one way of analyzing these phrases,  
but it depends upon one way of articulating these two verses within a  
vastly expansive textual sequence that affords, in my opinion,  
insufficient marks of fully intelligible or immediately discernible  
structure -- what Aristotle calls EUSUNOPTON.


Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)




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