[B-Greek] 1 Timothy 4:3: KWLUONTWN YAMEIN, APECESQAI
Elizabeth Kline
kline_dekooning at earthlink.net
Mon May 31 14:02:50 EDT 2010
On May 31, 2010, at 7:42 AM, Tom Moore wrote:
> I'm confused by the dual infinitive "hindering to marry, to abstain from foods..." in 1 Timothy 4:3:
>
> κωλυόντων γαμεῖν, ἀπέχεσθαι βρωμάτων, ἃ ὁ θεὸς ἔκτισεν εἰς μετάλημψιν μετὰ εὐχαριστίας τοῖς πιστοῖς καὶ ἐπεγνωκόσιν τὴν ἀλήθειαν.
>
> KWLUONTWN YAMEIN, APECESQAI BRWMATWN, hA hO QEOS EKTISEN EIS METALHMYIN META EUCARISTIAS TOIS PISTOIS KAI EPEGNWKOSIN THN ALHQEIAN
>
> This is universally translated as certain persons are doing two things: 1) forbidding marriage, and 2) commanding abstinence from certain foods.
>
> Is this bad grammar, that this verse doesn't explicitly say something like παραγγελλοντων ἀπέχεσθαι [PARAGGELLONTWN APECESQAI], "commanding to abstain"?
One of the keys to reading Ancient greek is learning how much can left out. In other words, what might seem intolerable in our mother tongue is perfectly normal in Ancient greek. I don't find anything ambiguous about the passages as it stands. The reader/hearer assumes the author is going to communicate a coherent thought unit and supplies what is lacking by inference from the co-text and the open scenario, more or less without thinking about it. The apparent contradiction of KWLUONTWN ... APECESQAI BRWMATWN probably wouldn't have even been noticed in an oral context where the letter was heard as speech. The mind processes the code level of the language with the presumption of both relevance and coherence. A minor ellipsis is passed over often without notice. If the code is sufficiently difficult (2Peter 1:3-4) the result is confusion.
Only when we subject the text to a grammatical analysis with an attempt to make everything conform to our notion of a "well formed" sentence/clause do we discover that an ellipsis has taken place. In natural language use this sort of analysis doesn't happen. The mind makes the thought coherent bridging the gaps and filling in the holes. That doesn't mean that analysis of the code isn't worthwhile, a fallacy promoted by some advocates of second language acquisition.
Elizabeth Kline
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