[B-Greek] Ephesians 2:3 - TEKNA FUSEI ORGHS

Carl Conrad cwconrad2 at mac.com
Mon Mar 29 14:13:16 EDT 2010


On Mar 28, 2010, at 6:04 PM, Mark Lightman wrote:
> 
> --- On Sun, 3/28/10, rhutchin at aol.com <rhutchin at aol.com> wrote:
> 
> <For the following phrases:
> 
> ...TEKNA FUSEI hORGHS...
> 
> ...FUSEI TEKNA hORGHS...
> 
> ...TEKNA hORGHS FUSEI...

Quibble: the word is ORGHS: there's no rough breathing on this noun.

> Does the ordering of the words change how one
>  might understand what the writer means to say 
> or how a person might translate the phrase?>
> 
> No,  Not only is Greek word order flexible enough
> to cover all three arrangements with little or no difference
> in meaning, it is MORE than flexible enough to do this.
> It's flexible enough, I mean, to do even MORE than this.

I'm not so sure about this one.

Text: 
Eph. 2:3 ἐν οἷς καὶ ἡμεῖς πάντες ἀνεστράφημέν ποτε ἐν ταῖς ἐπιθυμίαις τῆς σαρκὸς ἡμῶν ποιοῦντες τὰ θελήματα τῆς σαρκὸς καὶ τῶν διανοιῶν, καὶ ἤμεθα τέκνα φύσει ὀργῆς ὡς καὶ οἱ λοιποί· 
[EN hOIS KAI hHMEIS PANTES ANESTRAFHMEN POTE EN TAIS EPIQUMIAIS THS SARKOS hHMWN POIOUNTES TA QELHMATA THS SARKOS KAI TWN DIANOIWN, KAI HMEQA TEKNA FUSEI ORGHS hWS KAI hOI LOIPOI·]

The earlier discussion on this verse focused altogether upon the phase TEKNA ORGHS. I don't think anything was said about FUSEI here, and as I think about it, its position in the text between TEKNA and ORGHS seems less than transparent to me. I would have supposed that FUSEI construes with HMEQA or else with the whole clause HMEQA TEKNA ORGHS. The positioning of FUSEI in our text between TEKNA and ORGHS strikes me as strange, as I don't really see how the dative noun can construe with either the nominative or the genitive noun, as if it were adjectival ("natural children of wrath"). I really think the sense in the larger context must be: "we really were, in our inmost essence, condemned."

Mark may be right, claiming that any of Roger's suggested word-orders is as good as any other. But I'm not convinced. Does anyone think that FUSEI is intended by the author to be construed with the noun phrase TEKNA ORGHS rather than with the verb of the clause?

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)






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