[B-Greek] The relative pronouns in Ephesians 6:17 and Revelation 5:8‏

Leonard Jayawardena leonardj at live.com
Fri Oct 15 19:56:11 EDT 2010




________________________________
> Date: Fri, 15 Oct 2010 12:44:40 +0800
> Subject: Re: [B-Greek] The relative pronouns in Ephesians 6:17 and
> Revelation 5:8‏
> From: john.franklin.sanders at gmail.com
> To: leonardj at live.com
> CC: b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org
>
>
>
> 2010/10/15 Leonard Jayawardena>
>
>
> ________________________________
>> Date: Thu, 14 Oct 2010 13:54:35 +0800
>> Subject: Re: [B-Greek] The relative pronouns in Ephesians 6:17 and
>> Revelation 5:8‏
>> From:
> john.franklin.sanders at gmail.com
>> To: leonardj at live.com
>> CC: b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org
>
>
>> Conderning Ephesians 6:17:
>>
>> I consider the simile to be PNEUMATOS construed with hRHMA QEOU, then
>> the simile and the grammar work together. To consider the simile
>> something else will require an explanation of why the grammar of the
>> relative pronoun is wrong.
>> --
>> John Sanders
>> Suzhou, China
>
>
> LJ: A further comment on above.
>
>
> As I have already mentioned before, I understand hO ESTIN in THN
> MACAIRAN TOU PNEUMATOS, hO/ ESTIN rRHMA QEOU in Ephes. 6:17 to be
> explanatory hO ESTIN, seen also in the same book in 5:4.
>
> If the ordinary relative is used, then the "correct" form is hH,
> feminine singular, to agree with MACAIRA (feminine noun), which is the
> headword in the phrase THN MACAIRAN TOU PNEUMATOS. The word of God,
> here meaning the gospel, is metaphorically called a sword. "The sword
> of the spirit" is the offensive weapon wielded by the Christian
> soldier, the spiritual counterpart of the earthly, literal sword of,
> say, a Roman soldier. (A discussion of how exactly the gospel is a
> sword would take us beyond B-Greek.)
>
> Therefore if Paul did not use explanatory hO ESTIN, then we can only
> understand the relative pronoun here as being assimilated in gender to
> the predicate substantive, viz. rHMA (neuter), in the same way that the
> relatives in Rev. 4:5 and 5:8 are.
>
> PNEUMATOS is not even a possible antecedent for the relative because
> construing the relative with PNEUMATOS would make THN MACAIRAN TOU
> PNEUMATOS equivalent to "the sword of the word of God." To make any
> sense of that, you have to take TOU PNEUMATOS adjectivally, in which
> case the phrase means "the-word-of-God sword." But when the relative
> clause is addded, we have "the-word-of-God sword, which is the word of
> God" (!), which is nonsense.

> JFS: I am not sure I am going to buy into that. Once a substitution
> has been made, then employing it in the original sentence would insure
> redundancy. By seeing the "spirit" as the word-of-God, I see the sword
> as the means that "spirit", or word-of-God is spread. I do not require
> that you see the simile, or metaphore, as I do. But the metaphor I see
> conforms to the "grammar" of the text. You need to amend the
> "grammar", so that the text reads differently than what one would
> expect. I see no advantage in that admendment and its resultant
> reading, but you do. The burden of pursuasion lies with (because you
> are admending the expected syntax of the relative pronoun).

> John Sanders
> Suzhou, China


LJ: You are right-I made a mistake in using the relative clause after the substitution was made. In fact I realized my error before I read your post and was going to correct it.

However, the substitution of hRHMA TOU QEOU for PNEUMATOS, which you see as the antecedent of the relative pronoun, still results in the phrase "the sword of the word of God" (which, if one is to make any sense at all of it, has to be understood as "the-word-of-God sword," "the word of God" being understood adjectivally).  Your interpretation of this is, "By seeing the 'spirit' as the word-of-God, I see the sword as the means that 'spirit,' or word-of-God is spread." Am I really seeing what I am reading? Are you actually saying that Paul is urging the Ephesians to use a literal sword to spread the message of the gospel? 


Leonard Jayawardena 		 	   		  



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