Stephen Carlson wrote: I'm a little more attuned to the issue of "which text?" than most everyone else ... NA26/7/8
Well yes, it seems you are more attuned than anyone else I've ever known. If you need to know the exact date of the text I was referring to there are two, the recent is the Byzantine Text 28/9/05, and the older one the Patriarchal one's date seems to be 2/2/(19)03 (but I'm not sure if that is a Gregorian date). In specific regard to your quandary, perhaps if I include some verbatim quotations and you make an intelligent assumption that I not deliberately misquoting scripture, then I think we can reach a happy middle point.
Stephen Carlson wrote:you don't give a rendering of the whole phrase
The other reason that I don't instinctively "render" the passages is because I don't aim to translate as I read. I will try to remember to do that in your forum.
Apart from omitting the πατρὶ of Jude 1 the first time I wrote it out, I have some other points in memorising this book where the road is still unsealed. If you'd like to make any intelligent suggestions, I'd be pleased to consider them:
The
παρακαλεῖν of Jude 3 ἀνάγκην ἔσχον γράψαι ὑμῖν, παρακαλῶν ἐπαγωνίζεσθαι feels a bit disjointed from the phrase before. Does it feel okay to you? I get the impression that he is using the ἀνάγκην ἔσχον γράψαι in much the same way that one would use a simple past tense ἔγραψα, like as if he was reporting what he had done ἔγραψα παρακαλῶν -σαι/-σθαι, and then added the need part ἀνάγκην ἔσχον (in the past) and kept the rest of the construction. I think if I wa going to make a pattern to remember this pattern I would take it together with Mark 1:40 Καὶ ἔρχεται πρὸς αὐτὸν λεπρός, παρακαλῶν αὐτὸν, and say that following some way of getting access to someone, it is okay to use the present participle of παρακαλεῖν. Does the Greek of this verse seem stilted to you or okay?
In
Jude 4 οἱ πάλαι προγεγραμμένοι εἰς τοῦτο τὸ κρίμα, ἀσεβεῖς. The
προγράφειν with the πάλαι obviously does refer to the fact that they were condemned from a long time ago, but I think there is more to the Greek than there is to the English. It seems that the English translations miss out the τοῦτο. The way that I read it is to take the ἀσεβεῖς as an unassociated nominative - being what is written on the sign on the cage or the stocks where they are being held. My conjecture is something like, "Those who from a long time ago were publicly displayed with this condemnation written over their head <<Ungodly Men>>". Of course then Jude goes on to describe what ungodly means and how they are example of that behaviour. I considered the logical parallel of πρόκεινται δεῖγμα 'they are sitting in front of everyone as a bad example that shouldn't be followed' in verse Jude 7 as probably describing more-or-less the same thing. Another way to put that is to say that I think that BDAG meaning 2 is also a valid possibility for understanding προγράφειν, not only 1b.
If we take the syntax of
Jude 4 τὸν μόνον δεσπότην θεὸν καὶ κύριον ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦν χριστὸν ἀρνούμενοι as it stands based around the verb
ἀρνούσθαι as it usually occurs then we would naturally put the whole of τὸν μόνον δεσπότην Θεὸν καὶ Κύριον ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦν Χριστὸν all together as a unit to be denied, BUT if we take ἀρνούσθαι as being the semantic opposite of ὁμολογεῖν (when thinking about something, but perhaps βούλεσθαι when discussing something to do. cf the textual variants in Herodotus Histories 6:13) and compare it with utterances like ἵνα ἐάν τις αὐτὸν ὁμολογήσῃ Xριστόν in John 9:22 where the two halves are on either side of the verb, or the πᾶν πνεῦμα ὃ ὁμολογεῖ Ἰησοῦν Xριστὸν ἐν σαρκὶ ἐληλυθότα ἐκ τοῦ θεοῦ ἐστίν· of 1 John 4:2 where they are together, then I think we get a much more understandable result. So the verse here is not directed at atheists, but rather at those who denied the full incarnational divinity/humanity of Jesus Christ. Not a complete denial of Jesus, but denying this important thing about him. That sits more naturally with me. How about you?
Now considering
μέντοι in the construction of
Jude 7and 8 Ὡς Σόδομα καὶ Γόμορρα, ... Ὁμοίως μέντοι καὶ οὗτοι ἐνυπνιαζόμενοι ... The overall structure of Ὡς ... Ὁμοίως ... being the first words of verses 7 and 8 is a construction like a grammatical worm-hole allowing trans-dimensional referentiality. It says like, the unchanged referential action after the Ὡς ... is what is used to understand the things after the Ὁμοίως ... . Of to understand the flow of language in terms of water, it is like when a river disappears (becomes and aquifer) then comes out again later - the whole scene apparently changes, but the water is still the same. There is nothing negative about it. In this case the Ὁμοίως is first followed by μέντοι καὶ οὗτοι ἐνυπνιαζόμενοι "indeed also these guys when they are having their visions". There doesn't seem that μέντοι here has any adversative sense at all. I can't really see why BDAG has it as "Weakened to
but."
In
Jude 10 Οὗτοι δὲ ὅσα μὲν οὐκ οἴδασιν βλασφημοῦσιν· ὅσα δὲ φυσικῶς, ὡς τὰ ἄλογα ζῷα, ἐπίστανται, ἐν τούτοις φθείρονται., it seem to me that in the ὅσα μὲν ... ὅσα δὲ ... the
οἴδασιν is implicitly repeated (first with the negative particle and once with the φυσικῶς), another way of taking it is to say that the ὡς τὰ ἄλογα ζῷα is used as an explication of the φυσικῶς.
I will try to get a sounding from the swarm intelligence for my thoughts about ἀφόβως in Jude 12 later in another thread after I put it together more presentably.
Stephen Carlson wrote:convict the ungodly
About the thing from before, I don't want to quibble about glosses, but in my lexicon makes "convict" a really severe and final solution. I have thought some more about my καὶ ἐλέγξαι πάντας τοὺς ἀσεβεῖς αὐτῶν of Jude 15 question. I think that what I was thinking about was the way that the godly and the ungodly are mixed in together, or whether they were in separate groups all together, like whether there would be any advantage in having an ἐξ before the αὐτῶν, but that would imply that there was an homogeneity among the group of the πάντες 'everyone' of the ποιῆσαι κρίσιν κατὰ πάντων at the beginning of Jude 15. I'd always had the feeling that the πάντες groups were all sort of the same inside.