[B-Greek] Ephesians 2:8 ESTE SESWSMENOI

Carl Conrad cwconrad2 at mac.com
Thu Mar 24 06:26:41 EDT 2011


On Mar 23, 2011, at 11:37 PM, Barry H. wrote:

> 
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Eddie Mishoe" <edmishoe at yahoo.com>
> To: "B Greek" <b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org>; "Alexander Jech" <awjjech at gmail.com>
> Sent: Wednesday, March 23, 2011 11:08 PM
> Subject: Re: [B-Greek] Ephesians 2:8 ESTE SESWSMENOI
> 
> 
>> Alexander,
>> 
>> One of the main problems I've seen with Perfect Tense translations is that the interpreter will generally say something to the effect that the Perfect tense indicates that an action took place in the past, that action is now complete, and the state that results from that action continues on indefinitely. All the Perfect tense indicates is that the state obtained -- by virtue of some past, complete action -- remains in that state up to and including the moment of writing (technically, up to the deictic center, which is very often the time of writing, but it need not me). After that point, the Perfect tense makes no assertion. That is, the Perfect tense makes no temporal assertion about the Future.
>> 
>> It sure preaches well when the preacher says that "this Greek Perfect tense [which you have as ESTE SESWSMENOI, but your spelling is incorrect] tells us that we are saved, and that state of salvation continues forever." I happen to believe, on a theological level, that one's eternal destiny is forever settled at the historic moment of faith in God/Allah, but one would be foolish to argue that based on the use of the Perfect Tense in Eph 2.8.
>> 
>> I certainly welcome any comments, criticism, or whatever.
> 
> ἐστὲ σεσῳσμένοι transliterates as ESTE SESWSMENOI in the b-Greek protocol. How is his spelling incorrect?  With regard to your last point, I would say that you are essentially correct, but with the caveat that the writer here chose this periphrastic perfect passive because it best fit his meaning.  It is one datum, so to speak, which contributes to the overall theological understanding to which you allude above.  In other words, what we conclude at the theological level must be demonstrated to be consistent with the grammatical and syntactical levels...

(a) Actually ἐστὲ σεσῳσμένο transliterates properly in BG Transliteration as ESTE SESWiSMENOI -- the Iota subscript get just hat much respect in our system.
(b) Could we please keep discussion of theological and hermeneutical stances out of list discussion.

Carl W. Conrad
Co-Chair, B-Greek List
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)






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