Wes Wood wrote:I am afraid you would be in a better position to answer that question than I. You seem to have a much better handle on the language than I do. .
The outside perspective is the best position to be in to answer that question, it is not really appropriate for me to confirm the rightness of my own opinion; (
"I believe that my opinion / suspicion is right."
)
I "have a handle on" many of the expressions of the language, and I'd like to know more of its expressiveness. From what you have said in the Romans 5:20 thread, we are probably at a broadly-speaking similar level with NT vocabulary - perhaps I have a wider overall "Greek" vocabulary because I did the 5 years of Modern Greek and 4 years of Classical Greek besides the NT stuff. But as you would, I'm sure, realise, knowing vocabulary is like catching raindrops in the cusp of your hands - the hands are full only for a short time after the rains tops falling.
Wes Wood wrote:I don't really have much trouble reading greek with fluidity at this point, as long as I know the vocabulary. Right now I have a vocabulary of about 3500 words. I would say about 95% of the time I can use context clues or prior knowledge to get through what I don't know, but I always stop and look the items up.
Wes Wood wrote: clear ... context
The immediate context in this final "quarter" of chapter four is care for one another (to preserve unity and prevent factionalism). We can see that the παροργισμός "anger" (either the inner churning that could give give expression to "anger" ("rage" ὀργή) or the outside provocation or annoyance that could give rise to an angry reaction ("angry reaction to provocation" ὀργή). Looking at pastorally, it is unfortunatel that we see all too commonly in the life of our church congregations that somebody's getting angry with another person and leaving for a while is often very difficult, even impossible to fix up, or even just very uncomfortable to confront -and then there is a schism or people go to another parish or denomination. People are sometimes "justified" for righteous anger in what they say - usually they are so in their own minds, but the result of the expression of anger is the same anyway. in a call for not schisming it is probable that there is schism and in the call for anger to be put away from us (ὀργὴ ... ἀρθήτω ἀφ᾿ ὑμῶν), that might be one of the causes for it. The wider context of the Ephesisans fourth chapter of is unity and avoiding schism. So at two levels there is clear possible context for this way of reading it. I'm wondering if the langauge allows the imperative to express that type of direction.