[B-Greek] Ephesians 2:3 - TEKNA FUSEI ORGHS
Nikolaos Adamou
nikolaos.adamou at hotmail.com
Wed Mar 31 20:51:32 EDT 2010
Carl wrote:
I continue to be uncomfortable with this formulation, HMEQA TEKNA
FUSEI ORGHS. I'd like to understand FUSEI as adverbial with HMEQA, but
I can't see any fully satisfactory accounting for the position of
FUSEI between TEKNA and ORGHS. We've explored the thought that FUSEI
might be being used in an adjectival sense: "We were REAL goners."
That would, I think be a colloquial English rendering of the sense.
Older Attic Greek would have expressed this, I think, with ONTWS:
HMEQA ONTWS TEKNA ORGHS or with a word like GENNAIOS; HMEQA GENNAIA
TEKNA ORGHS (in which case the word order TEKNA GENNAIA ORGHS would be
acceptable).
Nor do I fell comfortable talking about "marked" and "unmarked" order
here. I still find the word-order, TEKNA FUSEI ORGHS, very disturbing,
perhaps as disturbing as those opening verses of Ephesians that don't
seem to fall into a really meaningful order and sequence. I guess I'm
just not satisfied with any explanation I've yet seen, and I toy with
the thought that that the writer made a mistake in the placement of
this FUSEI, a mistake that never got corrected. Or did it?
Tischendorf's apparatus shows that several copyists wrote FUSEI TEKNA
ORGHS and several others wrote TEKNA ORGHS FUSEI. Nobody seems to
think that our text, HMEQA TEKNA FUSEI ORGHS, isn't the earliest form,
but it's evident that others besides myself have felt that the order
with FUSEI sandwiched between TEKNA and ORGHS is somewhat fishy.
I would like to make five points on this issue:
1. As Greek Word Study Tool of Perseus in
a) LSJ gives in I, provides the origin in opposite to θέσει,
the position.
b) The same in Middle Liddell I. 2. origin, birth, φύσει
γεγονότες εὖ Hdt.
This meaning is given in all the patristic references of this verse,
the simplest been:
(http://khazarzar.skeptik.net/pgm/PG_Migne/Severianus_PG%2065/Fragmenta%20in%20epistulam%20ad%20Ephesios.pdf).
[Καὶ ἦμεν τέκνα φύσει ὀργῆς. ὥσπερ υἱοὶ γεέννης, οὕτω καὶ τέκνα ὀργῆς.]
{KAI HMEN TEKNA FUSEI ORGHS. hWSPER hUIOI GEENHS, hOUTW KAI TEKNA ORGHS}.
2. A substitution with GENNAIA does not give the meaning of the author
but it is good Greek with a different meaning.
3. As far as the google search I did, I found the sequence “ TEKNA
ORGHS FUSEI ” in Greek or Latin characters nowhere - it is UNGREEK.
The alternative transposition “fusei tekna orghs” is found once, and
it makes sense, but it is not as clear as “ τέκνα φύσει ὀργῆς ” since
the identification of the origin is with respect to ὀργὴ and not το
τέκνα ὀργῆς.
4. While Westcott/Hort gives the verse 3 as “ ἐν οἷς καὶ ἡμεῖς πάντες
ἀνεστράφημεν ποτε ἐν ταῖς ἐπιθυμίαις τῆς σαρκὸς ἡμῶν ποιοῦντες τὰ
θελήματα τῆς σαρκὸς καὶ τῶν διανοιῶν, καὶ ἤμεθα τέκνα φύσει ὀργῆς ὡς
καὶ οἱ λοιποί•” Tischendorf 8th Ed. gives “ἐν ὅς καί ἡμᾶς πᾶς
ἀναστρέφω ποτέ ἐν ὁ ἐπιθυμία ὁ σάρξ ἡμᾶς ποιέω ὁ θέλημα ὁ σάρξ καί ὁ
διάνοια καί εἰμί τέκνον φύσις ὀργή ὡς καί ὁ λοιποί” which is the most
distant outlier in the biblical text, not just here, but in general.
5. In Greek the practical principle is an agreement. The verb of the
first close is ἀνεστράφημεν, for the close we have two alternatives,
the correct in agreement ἦμεν and the incorrect in disagreement ἤμεθα.
What is relevant is that we have one writing with an agreement in verb formulation,
and one with disagreement.
If anyone likes to call the writing with a disagreement scientifically accepted is fine.
Science is not free from mistakes and errors but full of it.
The difference in the scriptural forms was known to patristic usage
of the text as it is indicated by Origen.
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