Dative of means being used with a personal agent

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klitwak
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Dative of means being used with a personal agent

Post by klitwak »

My look at this thread hasn't shown all of it to me but I am very interested in the topic of the dative of means being used with a personal agent. At least I maintain that this happens. I've said this before but it seems to me absolutely implausible to view Col 1:16a, 16, (OTI EN AUTW EKTISQH TA PANTA, as anything but instrumental. All the other choices make Paul's rhetoric if not incomprehensible, fairly useless. This statement means that by means of Christ, a person for Paul, all things were made. I am fully aware that BDAG takes a different view but I find it utterly implausible. What is Paul's point here? Jesus, unlike the powers and principalities, is not created because all things were created by him. What would be the value (or even the meaning) of all things being created in relation to Jesus?

Similar constructions occur in Matt 12:27-28. Speaking of Satan as a being (IMHO), Jesus first asks, (OI (UIOI EN TINI EKBALLOUSIN? By whom (Not what) do your sons cast out? Then, Jesus says, EI DE EN PNEUMATI QEOU, "If I by means of the Spirit of God," and it seems clear to me that for Matthew, as for other NT writers, the Spirit of God, is not a thing or a force but a personal being. There are of course other uses for the subject phrase, such as in Matt 10:32 ὁμολογήσω κἀγὼ ἐν αὐτῷ. Here there is obviously not a instrumental force.

Still, what about Matt 13:57, καὶ ἐσκανδαλίζοντο ἐν αὐτῷ.? Would this not most plausibly mean that they were scandalized by him? It could be "at him," but it would still mean that they were scandalized because of him and since he caused it, it is "by him."

Sorry if I've missed a key part of the conversation, but I read the entire thread that I saw.

Ken Litwak
Azusa Pacific University
Kenneth D. Litwak, Ph.D.
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Stephen Carlson
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Re: Dative of means being used with a personal agent

Post by Stephen Carlson »

(mod note: I made this its own thread. --scc)
Stephen C. Carlson, Ph.D.
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Barry Hofstetter

Re: Dative of means being used with a personal agent

Post by Barry Hofstetter »

This is very similar to the thread I tried to start on Eph 5:18 which kept getting sidetracked on whether or not the passive voice really exists and the proper terminology to describe it. I lean towards a dative of agent in these texts to, but am still wondering if the use of the preposition is simply a stylistic variation or if it has additional significance. And no, I don't really have an answer yet... :?
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Re: Dative of means being used with a personal agent

Post by Stephen Carlson »

Barry Hofstetter wrote:This is very similar to the thread I tried to start on Eph 5:18 which kept getting sidetracked on whether or not the passive voice really exists and the proper terminology to describe it.
That thread is here: http://www.ibiblio.org/bgreek/forum/vie ... f=6&t=1970 And the passive voice stuff was split off into its own thread(s).
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Re: Dative of means being used with a personal agent

Post by Stephen Carlson »

On this thread, I don't want to be obtuse but my first reaction is we're not talking about a "dative of means" because the expression "dative of XXX" describes bare datives, without prepositions. Once you have a preposition, it's no longer a dative of so-and-so, but a sense of the preposition (that is governing a dative).

I realize that in Homer some prefer to look at case usage first and then see how a preposition/adverbial modifies the sense of the case, but by the time of the Koine these modifiers have become thoroughly grammaticalized into prepositions that head their own phrases. (Eventually, Modern Greek will dispense of the dative case altogether.) So I think that if the issue is the meaning of ἐν, we should be talking about that, not some other use of the dative.

The fact of the matter is that ἐν + singular person is pretty hard to get a good sense of and deserves extended consideration. For example, what is going on in Gal 1:24 καὶ ἐδόξαζον ἐν ἐμοὶ τὸν θεόν?
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Re: Dative of means being used with a personal agent

Post by Stephen Carlson »

klitwak wrote:I've said this before but it seems to me absolutely implausible to view Col 1:16a, 16, (OTI EN AUTW EKTISQH TA PANTA, as anything but instrumental. All the other choices make Paul's rhetoric if not incomprehensible, fairly useless. This statement means that by means of Christ, a person for Paul, all things were made. I am fully aware that BDAG takes a different view but I find it utterly implausible. What is Paul's point here? Jesus, unlike the powers and principalities, is not created because all things were created by him. What would be the value (or even the meaning) of all things being created in relation to Jesus?
There are many times I've disagreed with BDAG, but never to the extent of "utterly implausible." I'm not sure the hyperbole is helpful; the editors were careful scholars. At any rate, here is the text.
Col 1:16 SBLGNT wrote:ὅτι ἐν αὐτῷ ἐκτίσθη τὰ πάντα ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς καὶ ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς, τὰ ὁρατὰ καὶ τὰ ἀόρατα, εἴτε θρόνοι εἴτε κυριότητες εἴτε ἀρχαὶ εἴτε ἐξουσίαι· τὰ πάντα δι’ αὐτοῦ καὶ εἰς αὐτὸν ἔκτισται·
I agree that Col 1:16 presents Jesus as the personal agent of creation, but I get that from δι’ αὐτοῦ at the end, not from ἐν αὐτῷ at the beginning. I don't think we should be reading δι’ αὐτοῦ into ἐν αὐτῷ, when other alternatives seem attractive (e.g, a locative "in his sphere of influence").
klitwak wrote:Similar constructions occur in Matt 12:27-28. Speaking of Satan as a being (IMHO), Jesus first asks, (OI (UIOI EN TINI EKBALLOUSIN? By whom (Not what) do your sons cast out? Then, Jesus says, EI DE EN PNEUMATI QEOU, "If I by means of the Spirit of God," and it seems clear to me that for Matthew, as for other NT writers, the Spirit of God, is not a thing or a force but a personal being. There are of course other uses for the subject phrase, such as in Matt 10:32 ὁμολογήσω κἀγὼ ἐν αὐτῷ. Here there is obviously not a instrumental force.
This argument seems to assume a false dichotomy. Why can't the Holy Spirit be viewed sometimes as a person and other times as a force?
klitwak wrote:Still, what about Matt 13:57, καὶ ἐσκανδαλίζοντο ἐν αὐτῷ.? Would this not most plausibly mean that they were scandalized by him? It could be "at him," but it would still mean that they were scandalized because of him and since he caused it, it is "by him."
Again a locative: "and they took offense at him." Or perhaps causal as in Gal 1:24.

I don't see any of the proposed means interpretation of ἐν + person to be necessary or preferable for these examples.
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klitwak
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Re: Dative of means being used with a personal agent

Post by klitwak »

Stephen,

First, I'm not reading EN AUTW in Col 1:16 in the light of a later clause. I would like to know what it would mean for Paul to say, "All things were created in his sphere of influence," and how would that contribute to Paul's argument for the supremacy of Jesus the Messiah over all things. Does "sphere of influence" mean that Jesus gave suggestions to the one doing the creating, implying that Jesus had no actual role in creation? I can't see that helping Paul's argument. Indeed, doing something in Jesus' sphere of influence need not mean that Jesus was uncreated. It could mean that he was part of the "all things" created but that somewhere along the way, the created being Jesus influenced in some way the creation process. Again, that leaves Paul's argument somewhat odd to say the least. What would this prove for him? For as the sphere of influence, maybe Jesus was the first created thing, and something about him influenced the creator during the act of creating other things., Those are all possible meanings of "in his sphere of influence."

The same is true of the other examples. Jesus' listeners were offended at him. What does that mean? Something about Jesus caused them to be upset. If I say to someone, "I am mad at you," it carries with it the barely unstated idea that the other person caused the anger. To be scandalized at Jesus, would mean that they were offended by him, whether because of his teaching, or is clothing, or his table manners, or whatever. Matthew could have said, "They were scandalized at/by his words but he does not. What does it mean to be offended at someone? Sorry, but I don't see any meaningful way to make this locative. "At him" implies that he is the cause of the offense, the means by which they became offended. So what do you think?

Ken Litwak
Kenneth D. Litwak, Ph.D.
Reference and Instruction Librarian
Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary
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Asbury Theological Seminary
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Stephen Carlson
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Re: Dative of means being used with a personal agent

Post by Stephen Carlson »

klitwak wrote: First, I'm not reading EN AUTW in Col 1:16 in the light of a later clause. I would like to know what it would mean for Paul to say, "All things were created in his sphere of influence," and how would that contribute to Paul's argument for the supremacy of Jesus the Messiah over all things. Does "sphere of influence" mean that Jesus gave suggestions to the one doing the creating, implying that Jesus had no actual role in creation? I can't see that helping Paul's argument. Indeed, doing something in Jesus' sphere of influence need not mean that Jesus was uncreated. It could mean that he was part of the "all things" created but that somewhere along the way, the created being Jesus influenced in some way the creation process. Again, that leaves Paul's argument somewhat odd to say the least. What would this prove for him? For as the sphere of influence, maybe Jesus was the first created thing, and something about him influenced the creator during the act of creating other things., Those are all possible meanings of "in his sphere of influence."
I think it means that everything is created in his sphere of influence, that is, under his authority. I see no basis for "implying that Jesus had no actual role in creation"--that's just a topic not addressed at the beginning of Col 1:16 (though it is at the end). I don't know what your expectations are for Paul in this section, but I don't usually think of prayers and doxologies as "arguments." Here the text is basically heaping a bunch of attributes to glorify Jesus, not to refute the Arianism that will occur centuries later. For some reason you seem to want the text to talk about whether or not Jesus was uncreated, the key point of dispute in the early 4th century, but that begs the question whether that issue was even in Paul's mind when he wrote this and felt the need to say something about it.
klitwak wrote: The same is true of the other examples. Jesus' listeners were offended at him. What does that mean? Something about Jesus caused them to be upset. If I say to someone, "I am mad at you," it carries with it the barely unstated idea that the other person caused the anger. To be scandalized at Jesus, would mean that they were offended by him, whether because of his teaching, or is clothing, or his table manners, or whatever. Matthew could have said, "They were scandalized at/by his words but he does not. What does it mean to be offended at someone? Sorry, but I don't see any meaningful way to make this locative. "At him" implies that he is the cause of the offense, the means by which they became offended. So what do you think?
There's a difference between denotation and implication. Certainly, telling us where the offense is located (in some broad sense) can imply that it is also the cause (which you seem to equate to means). But just because you can infer a cause (which is not hard to do since everything in the world has a cause) does not mean that the expression actually denotes the cause. So why does English use a locative expression, "to be offended at him," instead of a causal one?
Stephen C. Carlson, Ph.D.
Melbourne, Australia
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