From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Fri Feb 19 1999 - 09:56:02 EST
At 8:38 AM -0500 2/19/99, Bart Ehrman wrote:
> In 2 Clement 10, after "for if we are eager to do good, peace will
>pursue us," comes a peculiar line (v. 3): dia tauthn gar thn aitian ouk
>estin heurein anthrwpon, hoitines paragousi phobous anthrwpinous,
>prohirhmenoi mallon thn enthade apolausin h thn mellousan epaggelian.
> Can anyone make sense of this without emending the text?
>
> Can anyone who thinks the text needs to be emended suggest something
>plausible?
I have to transcribe this into our more standard transliteration to make it
clear for myself; what I'm wondering (I don't have a Greek text of the
original handy) is whether the ANQRWP- form following hEUREIN is acc. sg.
or genitive plural;
DIA TAUTHN GAR THN AITIAN OUK ESTIN hEUREIN ANQRWP/ON (/WN?), hOITINES
PARAGOUSI FOBOUS ANQRWPINOUS, PROHiRHMENOI MALLON THN ENQADE APOLAUSIN H
THN MELLOUSAN EPAGGELIAN.
We want, of course, an antecedent for hOITINES, which could not ordinarily
be the singular ANQRWPON, in which case the hOITINES clause dangles. The
one thought that occurs to me is that, IF the word in question is the
genitive plural ANQRWPWN, it could be partitive; in earlier Greek, and
perhaps in second-century Atticist Greek also, it's common enough to find
partititives functioning as subjects and objects of sentences. So, IF the
word is ANQRWPWN, understood as a partitive and as subject of hEUREIN, then
we'd have: "if we are eager to do good, peace will pursue us, since it is
for this reason that it is impossible for any men to find it, such as bring
along human anxieties, since they have chosen enjoyment here rather than
the promise to come." I am understanding OUK ESTIN here again in the sense
OUK EXESTIN, "it isn't possible ..."
A bit more awkward, I think, but conceivable, is to understand ANQRWPON as
an acc. sg. subject of hEUREIN, and then, since it can be understood as a
generic human being, make the following clause a generic plural, as we do
in careless colloquial English, e.g.: "No one can do this, if they try to
do something else at the same time."
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics/Washington University
One Brookings Drive/St. Louis, MO, USA 63130/(314) 935-4018
Home: 7222 Colgate Ave./St. Louis, MO 63130/(314) 726-5649
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WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/
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