ἐν (τῷ) κόσμῳ

Stephen Carlson
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Re: ἐν (τῷ) κόσμῳ

Post by Stephen Carlson »

sethknorr wrote: June 18th, 2020, 6:06 pm Might Colossians 2:20 be because Paul was trying to indicate it was not previous reference, similar to John 1:1 with καὶ Θεὸς ἦν ὁ Λόγος.

1:6 τῷ κόσμῳ I would understand as earth.
2:8 τοῦ κόσμου I would understand as universe.
2:20 τοῦ κόσμου I would understand as universe.
2:20 ἐν κόσμῳ I would understand as earth.

This might be a weak argument but since it appears so close in proximity maybe Paul was trying to express the spiritual powers encompass a larger scope than just our earth.
Interesting. The logic however seems to require that κόσμος has the same referent; otherwise, it's tough to connect the two parts of the conditional.

My hypothesis, following a suggestion by Bakker who adopts a concept from functional grammar, is that modifiers like genitives and some prepositional phrases can be either classifying or localizing, in which cases the noun would lack or take the article respective. Where either classifying or localizing modifiers can be appropriate, the idiom would be to follow Apollonius' Canon. In Col 2:20b ἐν κόσμῳ modifies ζῶντες, which is predicating, so the prepositional phrase can be classifying--i.e., it specifies what subset of those living are in view, namely those living in the world (as opposed to those living in Christ?)--and thus the noun can be anarthrous. Those who favor a focus/prominence view might see the contrast between in the world and in Christ to be a good reason to omit the article with an identifiable referent.
Stephen C. Carlson, Ph.D.
Melbourne, Australia
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