Re: Mark 11:22 God's faith or faith in God?

From: Eric Weiss (eweiss@gte.net)
Date: Sun Feb 23 1997 - 08:47:26 EST


>> Micheal W. Palmer (mwpalmer@earthlink.net) wrote:

Thank you, Eric, for the correction. I should have been more precise in
my original statement. PISTEUW does not take an accusative case object
IN THE TYPE OF CONSTRUCTION THAT I AM DISCUSSING. If you look closely at
the examples you give from BAG you will notice that the accusative case
noun always states the content of what is believed, not the object of
ones trust. In other words, If IHSOUN (accusative) were to appear as the
object of PISTEUW (and a quick check with Accordance did not reveal any
matches), it would mean something like "I believe Jesus," not "I believe
IN Jesus." That is, it would indicate that I believe what Jesus said,
not that I have faith in him. They are not the same thing. My comments
about PISTIS were about cases in which faith IN Jesus is communicated.
These parallel uses of PISTEUW which do NOT have the object in the
accusative case, therefore, it is unlikely that they would use an
objective genitive. It is more likely that they would use a
prepositional phrase to communicate the "IN Jesus" relationship to the
noun PISTIS. <<

So does what you're saying make the argument that I believe James Dunn
makes for the objective genitive in his commentary on Galatians for
PISTEWS CRISTOU IHSOU...PISTEWS CRISTOU in Galatians 2:16 based on the
intervening hHMEIS EIS CRISTON IHSOUN EPISTEUSAMEN as basically saying
the same thing (the EIS + acc. makes it obvious that trust/faith in
Christ is what is meant) less convincing, and perhaps beside the point -
I mean, if "faithfulness of Christ" is what is meant, it seems to me
that the intervening EIS phrase could be translated as "believed in
Christ" without requiring the surrounding phrases to mean the same
thing.

[I still find - as I pointed out sometime last year - the EAN MH
(usually translated "unless," but here by many translations translated
"but") interesting, as it seems to imply that with certain conditions a
person can be justified EX ERGWN NOMOU.]

One other question: Is it possible that the genitives CRISTOU IHSOU and
PISTEWS CRISTOU are used here because using a prepositional phrase to
explain a prepositional phrase is kind of involved and hence a case that
eliminates the need for another preposition would be chosen, though
meaning the same as EIS + accusative (i.e., EAN MH DIA PISTEWS EIS
CRISTON IHSOUN...EK PISTEWS EIS CRISTON are clumsy and improper and
would even convey the wrong meaning)? This may be a real longshot, but
it occurred to me as a possible explanation as I was reading the verse -
of course, a "big Greek" should be able to answer whether or not Greek
writers ever did this.

-- 
"Eric S. and Karol Ann Weiss"
http://home1.gte.net/eweiss/index.htm


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