Re: Ephesians 5:14

From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Fri Jul 11 1997 - 10:02:17 EDT


At 10:20 AM -0400 7/11/97, T & J Peterson wrote:
>Peter Phillips wrote:
>>
>[snipped]
>>
>> So the lit. translation would be "light is everything which is being made
>> manifest" ???!!!
>
>The one comment I would make against this is that you've got it
>backward. Wallace gives a good explanation of how this all works in his
>grammar, but basically when you have a subject and a predicate
>nominative to identify, the definite one will be the subject--in this
>case, "everything which is being made manifest is light."

This is precisely right, I would say.

>> However, Irenaeus seems to translate the phrase as if PHANEROUMENON is a
>> deponent - "making manifest", so that he (quoting Ptolemy) ends up with the
>> phrase "all that makes manifest is light".
>
>Now, I guess it depends on how you take "deponent." You might want to
>check out a thread that came up not too long ago on this list, in which
>Carl Conrad explained his approach to middle/passives, suggesting that
>the middle idea is basic, and the passive builds off of that. A
>deponent then is not a middle/passive functioning as an active per se,
>but it would simply be one of the potential uses for the middle voice.
>(Carl, am I getting this right?) I would say "all that makes manifest"
>fails to capture this middle idea (since it assumes something else is
>the object of manifestation), so we may almost be forced into a more
>reflexive middle idea: "all that manifests itself." Practically
>speaking, I don't know that we end up too far from a passive idea, once
>we've gone that route.

How nice to know that I've been understood to mean what I said! Yes, I'd
call it "middle/reflexive" and translate: "All that manifests itself is
light." The slight(?) advantage of this over taking it as passive is that
it gives the initiative to the divine. Seems to me too that it's consistent
with the Johannine conception of Light as both revealing element and as
criterion against which falsehood is shown up (John 9 et alibi).

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics/Washington University
One Brookings Drive/St. Louis, MO, USA 63130/(314) 935-4018
Summer: 1647 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(704) 675-4243
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu OR cconrad@yancey.main.nc.us
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/



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