Re: 2 Cor. 6:16 sentence construction?

From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Wed Mar 25 1998 - 08:00:07 EST


At 6:37 PM -0600 3/24/98, justin johnson wrote:
>What's puzzling to me is that Paul uses the prestent tense when refering to
>the temple of the living God. But then he uses the 1st person plural future
>form of EIMI. This appears out of place in the sentence structure. It does
>not seem rational that Paul threw a word in a sentence that would not fit
>somehow
>into his thoughts. The only conclusion that I can come to is that Paul uses
>ESMEN to point to the OT prophecy in verse 16. In other words, Paul uses
>ESMEN to show the church that these prophecies concern you the church. I
>have noticed though that most translations do not translate the word ESMEN.
>They more of less ignore the word. Does anyone know where this type of
>contruction can be found in the bible or other sources? The problem with
>explaining this construction as "a wash in exegesis" is that this skirts
>around the issue.

But he uses the 1st plural ESMEN because his subject is 1st plural
(hHMEIS): the verb must agree with the subject in number and person; it is
the predicate word, NAOS that is singular: but in translation this must
read, "We are the temple of the living God."

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics/Washington University
One Brookings Drive/St. Louis, MO, USA 63130/(314) 935-4018
Home: 7222 Colgate Ave./St. Louis, MO 63130/(314) 726-5649
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu OR cconrad@yancey.main.nc.us
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/



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