Sentences in Greek

Eric S. Weiss eweiss at gte.net
Thu Aug 8 15:36:47 EDT 2002


Richard:

Since you separately e-mailed only me on this, and not Paul, too, I assume
you are responding to my statements, rather than Paul's (which I was
responding to and/or commenting on).

I do not think we have the same thing semantically in Ephesians 1 with EN
hWi that we have in the examples you gave, which I grant you do suffer
greatly when the clause is broken by a period. I guess it depends on how
one is to relate the prepositional phrase to the rest of the clauses and
sentences in the discourse. In the case of Ephesians 1, I think a good
case can be made (and the editors of N-A 26 apparently agree) that EN hWi
begins a new thought or a sufficiently separate thought such that in
English it would or could be equated to, or translated by, a new sentence.

I do not want to start an argument, or continue in an argumentative
manner, and we have agreed at Carl's request to keep this discussion
polite and free of sarcasm or personal remarks, so I'll just reiterate
that the point I'm asking or making is whether EN hWi can legitimately be
the start of a new sentence, both in Greek and (when translated) in
English. And it seems to me that translators and Greek NT text editors
believe EN hWi as the start of a sentence is in certain contexts (like
Ephesians 1) legitimate, and I do not personally think that it detracts
greatly from understanding the author's flow of thought -- and it may in
fact clarify it for the reader.



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