[B-Greek] Form versus Meaning (Was Meaning of EIS in Galatians6:8

Carl Conrad cwconrad2 at mac.com
Wed Jun 30 07:53:39 EDT 2010


On Jun 30, 2010, at 1:56 AM, Iver Larsen wrote:

> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Mark Lightman" <lightmanmark at yahoo.com>
> To: <bgreek at global4.freeserve.co.uk>; <b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org>
> Sent: 30. juni 2010 04:19
> Subject: Re: [B-Greek] Form versus Meaning (Was Meaning of EIS in Galatians6:8
> ...
> On the other hand, I think
> what George and Barry and Iver have done is what I
> like to call "the original sin of B-Greek." They have allowed form to get in the way of meaning. I am well
> aware that EIS plus the accusative does not normally
> indicate agency, and maybe it never does, but yes, here
> meaning can stretch that far.
> ------------------------
> 
> Hi, Mark,
> 
> I am afraid you are confusing form and meaning. The point was the meaning of EIS in this context. Of course, there is an interplay bewteen the meaning of individual words and the meaning of the text as a whole, but you still have to start from the meaning of the words. You cannot stretch the meaning of a text beyond what the meaning of the words allow.

I think that Iver has put the matter accurately and succinctly. At the risk of confounding matters 
beyond what's already been done in this thread, I'd like to expand upon what I'ver has said.

I really think that the thread got started on the wrong foot, so to speak. English versions
of Gal 6:8, so it seems to me, constituted the basis of a question about what the Greek text
of the verse can mean. That's a sort of reverse-engineering procedure of textual analysis,
and unfortunately, in my opinion, this is what is done all too frequently. The Greek text
really must be understood BEFORE it can be analyzed and BEFORE any version/translation
can be produced. Much of the mischief of what I've called a "reverse-engineering procedure"
lies in a failure to realize that the FORM in which a translation is cast does not necessarily
bear any relationship to the FORM of the original-language text. The "reverse-engineering
procedure" endeavors to discover the sense of the original-language text in terms of the
FORM of the translation. If that procedure turns out to be successful, it's more or less a
coincidence or accident rather than because the procedure is a useful or helpful one.

Text: hO SPEIRWN EIS THN SARKA hEAUTOU EK THS SARKOS QERISEI FQORAN 
hO DE SPEIRWN EIS TO PNEUMA EK TOU PNEUMATOS QERISEI ZWHN AIWNION.

Ultimately -- all too quickly, in fact -- the thread devolved into the question whether
a prepositional phrase consisting of EIS + accusative can indicate instrumentality. Mark
seems quite sure that he has seen an instance of this in Homer, but he can't cite it. For
my part, I'll believe it when I see the instance he has in mind, preferably more than a
single instance of it. I can imagine that there may be a context of a phrase consisting
of EIS + accusative may somehow imply instrumentality, but I certainly can't see it
in this verse, where we find unquestionably an agricultural metaphor of sowing seed
into a growing medium and harvesting a crop out of that growing medium. One could
reformulate this and say that the growing medium is an instrument whereby the harvest
is produced, but that is a considerable departure from the formulation of the thought
in the Greek text. And it is certainly no justification for an argument that EIS +
accusative as a qualifier of SPEIREIN is a way of indicating instrumentality, or that
EIS + accusative can ever bear the semantic force of "by means of."

I can readily formulate the meaning of Gal 6:8 thus: "If your own flesh is the growing
medium of your horticulture, then your crop is going to be total loss, but if spirit is your
growing medium, then your harvest will be everlasting life." I don't think I'd even call
that a paraphrase so much as an interpretative reformulation. I do think, however, that
it approximates the MEANING of Gal 6:8 and retains the agricultural metaphor, but
otherwise the FORM of the Greek text has been abandoned completely in this effort
to restate the MEANING.

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






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