[B-Greek] 2Cor 3:15-16 hHNIKA ... AN

Brian Abasciano bvabasciano at gmail.com
Thu Feb 4 15:11:44 EST 2010


By the way, I neglected to reply to some of your comments, Elizabeth, that I 
probably should have:

Elizabeth said: "However, because "we do this in English" it is a good idea 
to be skeptical about
reading it that way in Greek. It is far too easy to read our native language 
habits in to the text."

But I think that when one looks at the use of the construction in Greek, it 
turns out that they did it the same way we do. (Hey, this strikes me as a 
good example of what I was trying to say about the usage in 3:15 that you 
mentioned. Our looking does not bring about their having done it the way we 
do, but it does bring us to see it and know it, so that there is a sort of 
conditionality to the use of "when" in my statement here parallel to Paul's 
use of hHNIKA AN in 3:15.) See the list of examples I gave.

Elizabeth said: "Re: the Exodus passage, not sure what to do with that. It 
explains the use of  hHNIKA AN but I not certain how it helps to resolve the 
issue of
conditional and/or causal semantic features in  2Cor. 3:15-16."

In case it was not obvious, the fact that Paul's usage is based on Ex 34:34 
suggests it has the same force as it does there, a conditional one as I have 
been suggesting.


Brian Abasciano 




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