[B-Greek] The relative pronouns in Ephesians 6:17 and Revelation 5:8
Leonard Jayawardena
leonardj at live.com
Sun Oct 17 07:54:41 EDT 2010
________________________________
> Date: Sat, 16 Oct 2010 20:28:09 +0800
> Subject: Re: [B-Greek] The relative pronouns in Ephesians 6:17 and
> Revelation 5:8
> From: john.franklin.sanders at gmail.com
> To: cwconrad2 at mac.com
> CC: leonardj at live.com; b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org
>
> I agree, the issues with syntax were done early on.
> JFS
LJ: I don't know how you can agree! I think the reverse is true: Most of this thread has concerned grammatical issues. Even if you count the sentences that appear below, which is only part of the thread, references to metaphors consist of at most 10% of the whole--probably less than that. If you include the earlier exchanges not reproduced below, it is even less than that.
You wrote this in your penultimate post:
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).
I take that you are referring to the second of the two possible ways of understanding the relative pronoun in Ephesians 6:17 I have mentioned in my posts, which is (hO ESTIN!) that the relative is assimilated to the gender of the predicate substantive. If so, it would appear then you have not read my posts on this thread carefully. From the beginning I have held the view that hO ESTIN in this verse is explanatory and I have explicitly stated that this is my position after my first post--in my very first post I only mentioned the two possibilities.
If you are still not convinced that the relative pronoun in Ephesians 6:17 is explanatory--similar to TOUT' ESTIN, which is the Greek equivalent of the Latin id est--I suggest that you read the discussion on this subject in Robertson (the page references in my first post) and, if still not convinced, take a concordance and see how many times hO ESTIN is used in the NT as a set expression to introduce an explanation.
Leonard Jayawardena
> On Sat, Oct 16, 2010 at 6:23 PM, Carl Conrad
>> wrote:
> On Oct 15, 2010, at 9:17 PM, John Sanders wrote:
>> No, if anything, I would take the sword as a stand-in for GLOSSA. We are
>> still dealing with metaphors. I fear explaining the metaphors will be
>> beyond the permissable guidelines of this venue.
>>
>> JFS
>>
>> Suzhou, China
>
> Most of this thread has concerned the metaphors, I think, with minimal
> argumentation grounded in Greek grammar.
>
> Carl W. Conrad
> Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
>
>>
>> 2010/10/16 Leonard Jayawardena
>>
>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> ________________________________
>>>> 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
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> --
> John Sanders
> Suzhou, China
More information about the B-Greek
mailing list