Re: Genitives in 1 Peter 3:3

From: Revcraigh (Revcraigh@aol.com)
Date: Tue Dec 23 1997 - 21:07:05 EST


In a message dated 12/20/97 7:47:30 PM, you wrote:

>I'm a little cloudy on the uses of the genitive cases in 1 Peter 3:3.
>Could they be drawn by attraction to WN or is there something else I
>need to consider?
>
>
>WN ESTW OUX O ECWQEN EMPLOKHS TRIXWN KAI PERIQESEWS XRUSIWN H ENDUSEWS
>IMATIWN KOSMOS
>
>Respectfully,
>
>Kevin Mullins

I haven't seen any replies to your post, Kevin, so I'll give it a try. If I go
astray someone will point out my error in a future post, but it would be a
shame to ignore your question altogether as it is a perfectly proper question
for our list. Here goes.

I believe these genitives (EMPLOKHS, PERIQESEWS, and ENDUSEWS) are genitives
of content or apposition describing those things of which a woman's adornment
ought not to consist.

Let me take the elements out of their Greek order and put them into English
order:

The relative WN (= whose or of whom), a possessive genitive, relates back to
TWN GUNAIWN of verse 2.

The subject here is hO KOSMOS, in the old sense of the adornment (whence we
get our word "cosmetic").

ESTW is the present imparative 3rd pers. sing. (which has no exact parallel in
English) which I approximate as (it's attrocious English but gives the
imparative sense) "be it". This command is negatived by OUX, as opposed to MH
which one normally expects to find with imparatives. (BTW, can anyone explain
why?)

ECWQEN is an adv. stating that women's adornment ought not to be of the
outward kind.

Next we take the genitives of which you ask: EMPLOKHS TRIXWN KAI PERIQESEWS
XRUSIWN H ENDUSEWS hIMATIWN. As I say, I see these as appositive genitives or
genitives of content (see Blass, Debrunner, Funk section 167, p. 92 for an
explanation).

In other words Peter says that a woman's adornment should not be outward
[consisting] of braiding of hair and of decorations of gold or of putting on
of clothing.

Hope this helps and have a blessed holiday.
Rev. Craig R. Harmon.



This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Sat Apr 20 2002 - 15:38:41 EDT