[b-greek] Re: adj. or adv. in James 2:24

From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Sun Feb 11 2001 - 09:55:26 EST


At 2:40 PM +0000 2/11/01, Mark Wilson wrote:
>James 2:24
>
>hORATE TOINUN hOTI EX ERGWN DIKAIOUTAI ANQRWPOS
>KAI OUK EK PISTEWS MONON
>
>This last phrase is often given the translation:
>
>"and not by faith only (alone)"
>
>I note that MONON is either an adj. or adv. depending
>on how it functions in a sentence, right?
>
>Well, MONON does not seem to be in the proper form
>to be an adj. here (MONHS??); rather it appears to be an adv.
>
>If an adv., should we not undertand an implied verb?
>
>The last phrase would then be:
>
>"and not only (justified) by faith."

Yes; although adverbs are commonly constructed by adding -WS to the
adjectival stem, the neuter accusative of the adjective is often used
adverbially--and in that case, if you're distinguishing parts of speech,
you'd certainly want to call it an adverb. And yes, DIKAIOUTAI is certainly
understood as carried forward from what preceded.

>To me, James seems to be contrasting TWO kinds
>of DIKAIOU... One is works based; the other is faith based.
>Is this the surface level meaning to this verse?

I'd be more inclined to say that he's contrasting two CONCEPTIONS of how a
person DIKAIOUTAI and denying that one of them (EK PISTEWS MONON = OUK EX
ERGWN) has any validity. He's denying that PISTIS unaccompanied by behavior
demonstrating it DIKAIOI.


--

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
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/

---
B-Greek home page: http://metalab.unc.edu/bgreek
You are currently subscribed to b-greek as: [jwrobie@mindspring.com]
To unsubscribe, forward this message to leave-b-greek-327Q@franklin.oit.unc.edu
To subscribe, send a message to subscribe-b-greek@franklin.oit.unc.edu




This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Sat Apr 20 2002 - 15:36:50 EDT