[B-Greek] Justin and objective genitives

Michael Aubrey mga318 at yahoo.com
Tue Mar 8 11:01:49 EST 2011


Don't worry. I caught the joke--and laughed.



________________________________
From: Brian Abasciano <bvabasciano at gmail.com>
To: Michael Aubrey <mga318 at yahoo.com>; b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org
Sent: Tue, March 8, 2011 8:00:19 AM
Subject: Re: [B-Greek] Justin and objective genitives

 
Mike,
 
Hopefully you didn’t think I was criticizing your comment. It was perfectly  
fine and appropriate. I was just making a little joke. I have immense respect  
for Carl’s knowledge of Greek and almost always find myself agreeing with him  
(though not always). Having his regular commenting on the list is a real treat.  
When I saw your pithy comment, I thought it would be funny to give voice to some  
of this with a pithy response.
 
Brian Abasciano
  
From: Michael Aubrey 
Sent: Tuesday, March 08, 2011 10:48 AM
To: Brian Abasciano ; b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org 
Subject: Re: [B-Greek] Justin and objective  genitives
  I  had started to provide Dr. Ehrman with an actual reply of my own, but I saw  
Carl's response before I got very far. 

 
No  need for repetition.
 
But  if the question isn't clear...here are a couple more voices of agreement:
 
Moises  Silva's discussion of genitives in his delightful little book 
Interpreting  Galatians says the essentially the same thing about διʼ 
ἀποκαλύψεως Ἰησοῦ  Χριστοῦ (DI' APOKALUPSEWS IHSOU XRISTOU) in Galatians 1:12:
 
"One could argue that the context itself  seems to be leading us in different 
directions: the first part of 1:12a suggests  a subjective genitive, while 1:16 
supports an objective genitive. When faced by  a difficult choice of this type, 
some interpreters look for a solution that  allows them to bypass it. 
Accordingly, it has become increasingly popular to  argue that genitives could 
be both subjective and objective. We are even told  that this approach avoids 
false dichotomies and that it does more justice to the  richness of Paul’s 
thought. Unfortunately, this solution confuses concept with  grammar, and 
perhaps even theologizing with exegesis. It may well be true that  both of the 
concepts (Christ is the revealer as well as the One revealed) are  consonant 
with Pauline thought and are related. Moreover, since this very  passage teaches 
both the divine origin of the gospel and the fact that it came  to Paul when God 
revealed his Son, we could argue that either interpretation is  viable and that 
the apostle was merely relating the nouns to each other in a  general (indeed, 
vague) fashion. But it is important to appreciate that, if we  do so, we are not 
really saying that the apostle, because of his rich thought,  had both 
grammatical ideas in mind. Rather, we would be suggesting that he did  not have 
any specific syntactical connection in view; that is, imprecision,  rather than 
fullness, characterizes the expression."

Moisés Silva,Interpreting Galatians:  Explorations in Exegetical Method, 67-68.

Silva also has a footnote a few pages  earlier (page 65n2) here commenting:

"I owe to James Voelz the following observation: What is expressed in Greek  
through the genitive case is often expressed in English by simply juxtaposing  
two nouns, such as shoe sale, fire sale, garage sale. Note that it is simply our  
knowledge of the situational context that makes it perfectly clear to us that  
the first example is the equivalent of an objective genitive (a store is selling  
shoes); the second, something like a genitive of source (selling goods rescued  
from a fire); the third, genitive of place (selling goods in a garage). In other  
words, we are dealing with a very elementary and simple phenomenon."
 
http://www.amazon.com/Interpreting-Galatians-Explorations-Exegetical-Method/dp/080102305X

 
Silva's book is one of the few handbooks/introductions to exegetical method  
that I find tolerable--and thankfully, I also find it much, much more than  
merely "tolerable"!
 
Mike Aubrey
http://evepheso.wordpress.com
 

________________________________
 From: Brian Abasciano  <bvabasciano at gmail.com>
To: b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org
Sent: Tue, March 8, 2011 7:09:02  AM
Subject: Re: [B-Greek]  Justin and objective genitives

Mike said "Carl is  right."

Isn't he usually?

Brian  Abasciano

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