The "other" αὐτῶν Jude 15 and meaning order for περὶ ...

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Stephen Hughes
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The "other" αὐτῶν Jude 15 and meaning order for περὶ ...

Post by Stephen Hughes »

Has anyone got a solution as to how to fit the αὐτῶν, which comes after πάντας τοὺς ἀσεβεῖς in Jude 15 into the grammar, if one assumes that it was meant to be there and that Jude didn't just have bad Greek, and that he actually wanted it to be there for some reason best know to himself.
The context is
The Lord will come to ... καὶ ἐλέγξαι πάντας τοὺς ἀσεβεῖς αὐτῶν περὶ πάντων τῶν ἔργων ἀσεβείας αὐτῶν ὧν ἠσέβησαν

Thinking outside the Grammatical box, I wonder if it was meant as an "every one of them" emphasis. Sorry, I've been staring at the light too long over this, but would that more naturally be; "πάντας αὐτῶν τοὺς ἀσεβεῖς" (my conjecture)?

In the phrase περὶ πάντων τῶν ἔργων ἀσεβείας, is that more naturally as "concerning the ungodliness of all their deeds" (parenthetical - the ungodliness is what is wrong, as expressed in the deeds) rather than the "concerning all the deeds of their ungodliness" (left to right word order, where ἀσεβείας is taken as an epexegetically - the deeds are compared with a standard of ungodliness). It seems to me more natural to take it parenthetically following a structure like Jude uses in the αἱ περὶ αὐτὰς πόλεις, and περὶ τοῦ Μωϋσέως σώματος a few verses earlier, and the τὸν ἀπὸ τῆς σαρκὸς ἐσπιλωμένον χιτῶνα further down.
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
Stephen Carlson
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Re: The "other" αὐτῶν Jude 15 and meaning order for περὶ ...

Post by Stephen Carlson »

Stephen Hughes wrote:Has anyone got a solution as to how to fit the αὐτῶν, which comes after πάντας τοὺς ἀσεβεῖς in Jude 15 into the grammar, if one assumes that it was meant to be there and that Jude didn't just have bad Greek, and that he actually wanted it to be there for some reason best know to himself.
You should make it clear that you're discussing the Byzantine reading of the text here; the critical text has πᾶσαν ψυχήν instead. It's a little hard to talk about Jude's Greek when it's not clear that the author of Jude is even responsible for it.
Stephen Hughes wrote:The context is
The Lord will come to ... καὶ ἐλέγξαι πάντας τοὺς ἀσεβεῖς αὐτῶν περὶ πάντων τῶν ἔργων ἀσεβείας αὐτῶν ὧν ἠσέβησαν

Thinking outside the Grammatical box, I wonder if it was meant as an "every one of them" emphasis. Sorry, I've been staring at the light too long over this, but would that more naturally be; "πάντας αὐτῶν τοὺς ἀσεβεῖς" (my conjecture)?
Your proposal isn't very clear because you don't give a rendering of the whole phrase. Do you mean "and to convict the ungodly, every one of them" or "and to convict everyone of them, the ungodly"? What's wrong with "and to convict all their ungodly people"?
Stephen Hughes wrote:In the phrase περὶ πάντων τῶν ἔργων ἀσεβείας, is that more naturally as "concerning the ungodliness of all their deeds" (parenthetical - the ungodliness is what is wrong, as expressed in the deeds) rather than the "concerning all the deeds of their ungodliness" (left to right word order, where ἀσεβείας is taken as an epexegetically - the deeds are compared with a standard of ungodliness). It seems to me more natural to take it parenthetically following a structure like Jude uses in the αἱ περὶ αὐτὰς πόλεις, and περὶ τοῦ Μωϋσέως σώματος a few verses earlier, and the τὸν ἀπὸ τῆς σαρκὸς ἐσπιλωμένον χιτῶνα further down.
My first inclination is to take the second choice because the epexegetical use of the genitive as in "concerning all their deeds of ungodliness" = "concerning all their ungodly deeds" is a fairly common Biblical idiom. I don't see how the other examples are relevant; we're dealing with an abstract noun.
Stephen C. Carlson, Ph.D.
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Stephen Hughes
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Re: The "other" αὐτῶν Jude 15 and meaning order for περὶ ...

Post by Stephen Hughes »

Stephen Carlson wrote:discussing the Byzantine reading of the text here
Yes, you are right. I didn't mention it was such and such a manuscript, because it is not really something to do with the grammar that my question that I was asking.
This is a question arising out of my personal reading, memorisation and meditation. I find that it is much easier to memorise passages of the New Testament when I understand the grammar. When I come across things like the "αὐτῶν" in this verse, where the "flow" of the Greek is sort of derailed, I first doubt my grammatical ability, and wonder if I didn't overlook something obvious, so that is why I asked the question.
Let me explain a bit why I use the Byzantine textual tradition as a basis for my personal reading and memorisation. The main reason is because it more closely represents the text of the New Testament as it came to be settled both in both textual form and number-of-books cannon after the age of heresies and persecution when communications were easier and the church was no longer under pressure from within and without. And it was after the councils were able to discuss and define which beliefs were outside the acceptable limits of the faith, and then bring that process of self-reflection / self-criticism into the manuscripts that were being transmitted.
I used to do my personal readings using the TR text, but these days, I also use the much broader 2005 text collated by Robinson and Pierpont. My reason for the reason for doing that is that TR is not (as I had assumed) the definitive version of a manuscript tradition, but rather a sincle simplified representation of a much broader tradition. Having said that, I don't think that there has ever been a necessity to have a single completely standardised text of the New Testament in the Church and a range of variants has long been tolerated, so long as they were not outside doctrinal boundaries. I feel that Robinson and Pierpont's text does justice to that toleration of diversity.
Of course, putting together a "critical" (photomontage) text that arrives at a hypothesised least-is-best, least-varient-from-the-average-is-normal standard is a great scholarly exercise. In a sense, it is non-discriminatory, taking into account texts that had been transmitted (copied and edited) at a earlier date, when there were still numerous groups and/or individuals that held to doctrinal variations (especially) in regard to the person and divinity of Jesus Christ.
I think that those early diverse manuscripts have value because, it seems to me that some of those early manuscripts, taken individually, some of those early texts are of value to those wanting to study progressive emergence of orthodoxy in counterpoint to heresy in the early christian centuries. That is in much the same way that we can conduct a scholarly exercise when we read the Nag Hammadi texts (especially it seems the "Gospel of Thomas"), the Dead Sea scrolls or texts from different other traditions (a number of which I have read during the course of my studies) to see their particular theology expressed in texts that emerged within those traditions, and to see what impact their variant scriptural readings can have on our understanding of the text. Indeed, rather than conjecture about what heresy or tendency to error was being referred to or refuted implicitly or explicitly, it is great to have direct statements about variant beliefs or examples of scribal omissions, when understanding a text.
Such information is great in scholarship, but not as part of the exercise of personal reading and devotion, which was where my question was coming from.
I'm sorry not to have made that more clear in the original posting.
Stephen Carlson wrote:Your proposal isn't very clear because you don't give a rendering of the whole phrase. Do you mean "and to convict the ungodly, every one of them" or "and to convict everyone of them, the ungodly"? What's wrong with "and to convict all their ungodly people"?
The reason I did not give a full translation is that I was looking for a way to take the αὐτῶν with the πάντας τοὺς ἀσεβεῖς inside the grammar of the text that I quoted. It was not that I didn't say fully what I was thinking, but rather that I had not fully have a way to think about it. Thank you for your suggestions, I will consider them and get back to you. And I will consider your distinction between the (grammatical) concepts of abstract and concrete against the evidence in other texts and get back to you.
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
Stephen Carlson
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Re: The "other" αὐτῶν Jude 15 and meaning order for περὶ ...

Post by Stephen Carlson »

No problem. My dissertation involved the textual criticism of Galatians, so perhaps I'm a little more attuned to the issue of "which text?" than most everyone else. I don't mind people using vaious forms of the text, but if the text they're using differs from from NA26/7/8, it would be good to point that out so that when I look at my personal NT, I don't get confused and start examining the wrong part of the sentence.

It is quite unfortunate that the NA editions do not supply enough information to reconstruct a Byzantine text from the apparatus (and even when it does for particular variants, it can be quite difficult to do so), so I appreciate your quoting the text rather fully.
Stephen C. Carlson, Ph.D.
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Stephen Hughes
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Re: The "other" αὐτῶν Jude 15 and meaning order for περὶ ...

Post by Stephen Hughes »

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.
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
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