Re: MALLON XRESAI

From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Mon Oct 28 1996 - 20:55:28 EST


At 6:27 PM -0600 10/28/96, Peter Eyland wrote:
>I would appreciate some opinions about MALLON XRESAI in1 Cor 7:21b.
>It is interpreted by Luther and Calvin as *take the opportunity*. However
>John Chrysostom says: MALLON XRESAI TOUT' ESTIN MALLON DOULEUE,
>perhaps in line with Hermas, Sim I. 3,4: TOIS NOMOIS XRESQAI.
>Which do you prefer?

In view of the whole sentence context:

1 Cor 21: DOULOS EKLHQHS, MH SOI MELLETW; ALL' EI KAI DUNASAI ELEUQEROS
GENESQAI, MALLON XRHSAI.

I think that the ALLA indicates the second pair of clauses is antithetical
to the first, or perhaps rather that it contemplates the possibility of
freedom and explicitly rejects the notion of remaining in slavery if one
CAN gain freedom legitimately.

I'm inclined, personally, to want to punctuate with a question mark after
DOULOS EKLHQHS (although one might also see the whole sentence as two
parallel conditional constructions in a loose paratactice arrangement) and
understand its sense as follows: "Were you a slave when God called you?
Then don't worry about it; but if you even have the power (=opportunity) to
be emancipated, readily take advantage of it."

XRHSAI certainly DOES mean "take advantage of": it's a precise equivalent
of Latin UTOR or French SE SERVIR DE.

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/



This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Sat Apr 20 2002 - 15:37:54 EDT