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

Mark Lightman lightmanmark at yahoo.com
Tue Mar 30 08:16:40 EDT 2010


Carl wrote:
 
 <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?>
 
Hi, Carl,
 
I do.  As you suggested in an earlier post "naturally born sinners."
"Children by nature" is not redundant because Paul is drawing a contrast
with the way we are born and what we become--adopted children of God through
Christ. (Gal 3:26)
 
Eric wrote:
 
<Does anyone see a connection between this discussion
 and the one on being born again? "Son of x" seems to refer
 to someone's inherent nature from birth from their parents.
 How is that nature changed or replaced? By being born again
 (or from above), thus obtaining a new (higher) nature from a
 new (higher) source. There seems to be a semantic theme
 here involving several words and idioms.>
 
I think Eric is on to something.  These "son" of and FUSEI and GEN
metaphors are used to play off the fixed-nature feudalism of Greek
culture.  In reading Homer, you get the idea that if
you were born KALOS, you stayed that way. How many Homeric 
heroes does it take to change a light bulb?  None,  Homeric
heroes don't change, they merely express their fundamental nature.
 
But Paul says Christians can change, and he uses the "son/children of"
metaphor often to make this point.  John the Baptist had already
done so:  "God is able to raise children (TEKNA) of Abraham
from these stones." (Mt. 3:9)  God can take a GENAIOS stone and
make it into a GENAIOS receiver of the Kingdom.
And yes, I think Eric is correct in observing that Jesus used
a similar metaphor in John 3.  Nicodemus represents the skepticism
of feudalism  “Can a man really be δευτερον...γεννηθηναι?” (v. 4)
(DEUTERON GENNHQHNAI?)  Is the γενναιος (GENAIOS,) the noble
by birth, the genuine-by-being-born-that-way, really open to change?
A new creation? The Greek NT tradition says NAI.
 
But the question was about word order.  Even if you take FUSEI with
"we were," can word order really do this?  The FUSEI is still closer to
TEKNA, but even if it were not, even if there is a "normal" word order
and even if Paul were to depart from that, can anything be read into
the meaning?  That was Roger's question.  I still say no.
 
I think this is an instance where we have to apply the "Kline
Formula of Semantic Morpho-Syntax," which states that Meaning
precedes Form.  Whatever this passage means (and I don't think
Carl and I disagree, really, about what it means) it is NOT
determined by form (in this case word order,) not only because
of the Kline Formula but also because of the Lightman Rule of
Logo-Taxis, which states that, in general, Greek word order has
no semantic, but only stylistic, force.
 
The Lightman Rule of Logo-Taxis may be overstating the case.
It is a recent formulation that I came up with after looking carefully
at where ESTIN falls in a clause.  The "normal" word order, I think
would be at the end.  AFRONIMOS MARKOS ESTIN.  But I've been
re-reading Chariton, the Symposium, and the Gospel of John, and
I am telling you right now, the position of ESTIN jumps around and
around with no discernible difference in meaning.  Try it out for
yourself.
 
Greek has to be one of the languages were word order has the
LEAST semantic force, and English has to be one where
word order has the MOST semantic force.  Which makes things
fun.


Mark L
Φωσφορος

FWSFOROS MARKOS

--- On Mon, 3/29/10, Carl Conrad <cwconrad2 at mac.com> wrote:


From: Carl Conrad <cwconrad2 at mac.com>
Subject: Re: [B-Greek] Ephesians 2:3 - TEKNA FUSEI ORGHS
To: "Mark Lightman" <lightmanmark at yahoo.com>
Cc: b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org, rhutchin at aol.com
Date: Monday, March 29, 2010, 12:13 PM


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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