Re: Galatians 5:4 THS XARITOS ECEPESATE: what kind of genitive?

From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Mon Oct 07 1996 - 15:17:34 EDT


At 1:14 PM -0500 10/7/96, Jonathan Robie wrote:
>Greetings from Hamburg, Germany, where I'm still working on Java
>documentation...and thanks for the help on Galations 4. This was really
>helpful
>(when I first hit that chapter, I thought my Greek was completely on the fritz
>-- is this a hard chapter in general, or just a hard chapter for me?).
>
>What is the semantic force of the genitive in THS XARITOS in Galations 5:4?
>
>Here's the entire verse: KATHRGHQHTE APO XRISTOU OITINES EN NOMW
>DIKAIOUSQE, >THS XARITOS ECEPESATE.

Yes! It IS hard! Personally, I've always thought that allegory of Hagar and
Sarah is nigh unto impenetrable.

As for THS XARITOS ECEPESATE, I think we must understand THS XARITOS as
ablatival and construed with the EC (I'd really prefer to spell this EKS
or, but that's primarily because the Greek font I uses J for Xi) in the
compound verb: "from grace have you been cast out"--I know that it's more
normal to translate that: "you have fallen from grace," but PIPTW normally
functions for the passive of BALLW, so that here EKPIPTW = passive
of EKBALLW (which, curiously, has a regular political/juridical sense of
"exile" and "divorce" in classical Attic). I won't even remotely touch the
question of how we are to interepret this theologically!

>P.S., Es gibt ueberall grosse Maronen im Wald. Ich habe ein Fahrradtour durch
>den Briesental gemacht am Sonntag.

Then are the vendors already out on the streets with their braziers lit up
and hawking "Heisse Maroni?"

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University
One Brookings Drive, St. Louis, MO, USA 63130
(314) 935-4018
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu OR cwc@oui.com
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/



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