σαυτοῦ

Andrew Chapman
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σαυτοῦ

Post by Andrew Chapman »

Chrysostom, 15th Homily on Ephesians

Τί οὖν, ἂν ᾖ, φησὶ, λοίδορος καὶ λάλος καὶ μέθυσος; Πόσαι δέ εἰσιν ἐλεύθεραι τοιαῦται;

Πάντα δὲ τὰ ἐλαττώματα τῶν γυναικῶν φέρειν τοὺς ἄνδρας προσέταξεν ὁ Θεός. Μόνον μὴ ἔστω, φησὶ, πόρνη ἡ γυνὴ, καὶ πάντα τὰ λοιπὰ φέρε ἐλαττώματα.

Κἂν μέθυσος ᾖ, κἂν λοίδορος, κἂν λάλος, κἂν βάσκανος, κἂν πολυτελὴς, κἂν σπαθῶσα τὴν οὐσίαν, κοινωνὸν ἔχεις βίου·

ῥυθμίζειν ἀνάγκην ἔχεις· διὰ τοῦτο κεφαλὴ εἶ σύ. Οὐκοῦν ῥύθμιζε, τὸ σαυτοῦ ποίει.

Κἂν ἀδιόρθωτος μένῃ, κἂν κλέπτῃ, φύλαττε τὰ σά· μὴ ἐκείνην τοσοῦτον τιμωροῦ· ἂν λάλος ᾖ, ἐπιστόμιζε. Τοῦτο φιλοσοφίας ἐστὶ τῆς ἀνωτάτω.

Νυνὶ δὲ εἰς τοσοῦτό τινες ἀτοπίας ἥκουσιν, ὡς ἀποκαλύπτειν τὴν κεφαλὴν, καὶ ἀπὸ τριχῶν σύρειν τὰς θεραπαινίδας.

Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers:

“But what then,” ye will say, “if she shall be a railer, or a gossip, or a drunkard?” Yet, how many free women are such?

Now, with all the failings of women God hath charged men to bear: only, He saith, let not a woman be an harlot, but every other failing besides bear with.

Yea, be she drunkard, or railer, or gossip, or evileyed, or extravagant, and a squanderer of thy substance, thou hast her for the partner of thy life.

Train and restrain her. Necessity is upon thee. It is for this thou art the head. Regulate her therefore, do thy own part.

Yea, and if she remain incorrigible, yea, though she steal, take care of thy goods, and do not punish her so much. If she be a gossip, silence her. This is the very highest philosophy.

Now, however, some are come to such a height of indecency as to uncover the head, and to drag their maid-servants by the hair.

................
ῥυθμίζειν ἀνάγκην ἔχεις· διὰ τοῦτο κεφαλὴ εἶ σύ. Οὐκοῦν ῥύθμιζε, τὸ σαυτοῦ ποίει.

Wayne Grudem says that Chrysostom is here speaking to the woman, that she is the head of her maidservant and needs to train and restrain her. It seems to me that it must be the husband who is being addressed, since σαυτοῦ is masculine. Am I right?

Also, is the expression κοινωνὸν βίου more likely to be used of the relationship of a man with his wife, or a woman with her maidservant?

Andrew
Barry Hofstetter
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Re: σαυτοῦ

Post by Barry Hofstetter »

Andrew Chapman wrote:ῥυθμίζειν ἀνάγκην ἔχεις· διὰ τοῦτο κεφαλὴ εἶ σύ. Οὐκοῦν ῥύθμιζε, τὸ σαυτοῦ ποίει.

Wayne Grudem says that Chrysostom is here speaking to the woman, that she is the head of her maidservant and needs to train and restrain her. It seems to me that it must be the husband who is being addressed, since σαυτοῦ is masculine. Am I right?

Also, is the expression κοινωνὸν βίου more likely to be used of the relationship of a man with his wife, or a woman with her maidservant?

Andrew
Andrew, I was looking at the text to see if anything in the context really justifies Grudem's interpretation, but here I think you are onto something. σαυτοῦ definitely clarifies that Chrysostom saw the subject of the imperatives as masculine.

As for κοινωνὸν βίου, it does seem a rather strong statement to describe a master-slave relationship, though I don't think it would be totally impossible.
N.E. Barry Hofstetter, M.A., Th.M.
Ph.D. Student U of FL
Instructor of Latin
Jack M. Barrack Hebrew Academy
καὶ σὺ τὸ σὸν ποιήσεις κἀγὼ τὸ ἐμόν. ἆρον τὸ σὸν καὶ ὕπαγε.
Andrew Chapman
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Re: σαυτοῦ

Post by Andrew Chapman »

Barry, thanks very much.

I just found this, in Chrysostom's Homily 13, written to husbands, again containing the same word ῥυθμίζειν concerning their responsibility to their wives, and again followed by a σαυτοῦ:

Σὺ ἐτάχθης ἐκείνην ῥυθμίζειν· πανταχοῦ τῶν πρωτείων ἀξιοῖς τυγχάνειν· οὐκοῦν καὶ ἐν τούτῳ δεῖξον, ὅτι σοι τῆς πολυτελείας οὐδεὶς λόγος ἐκείνης, ἀπὸ τῶν σαυτοῦ.

Thou art ordained to regulate her; in every way thou claimest to have the preëminence. Show her then in this also, that thou takest no interest in this costliness of hers, by thine own apparel. [NPNF]

Which seems to me decisive, as it is so similar to:

ῥυθμίζειν ἀνάγκην ἔχεις· διὰ τοῦτο κεφαλὴ εἶ σύ. Οὐκοῦν ῥύθμιζε, τὸ σαυτοῦ ποίει.

in the other passage, and removes the possible objection that ῥυθμίζειν fits better a woman's obligation to her maid-servant, than a man's to his wife.

Andrew
Andrew Chapman
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Re: σαυτοῦ

Post by Andrew Chapman »

I searched for κοινωνὸς βίου in Chrysostom, and in the first ten cases I looked at, it referred to a man's wife.

I also searched for ῥυθμίζειν in his homilies to the Ephesians, and in four cases out of seven, the object of the verb was a man's wife. In the other three, the object was his servant, or a combination of children, his wife, his own self, and his servant.

The only remaining difficulty for me is that it's a little easier to envisage a woman's maid servant stealing from her mistress than a wife stealing from her husband:

Κἂν ἀδιόρθωτος μένῃ, κἂν κλέπτῃ, φύλαττε τὰ σά· μὴ ἐκείνην τοσοῦτον τιμωροῦ· ἂν λάλος ᾖ, ἐπιστόμιζε. Τοῦτο φιλοσοφίας ἐστὶ τῆς ἀνωτάτω.

Νυνὶ δὲ εἰς τοσοῦτό τινες ἀτοπίας ἥκουσιν, ὡς ἀποκαλύπτειν τὴν κεφαλὴν, καὶ ἀπὸ τριχῶν σύρειν τὰς θεραπαινίδας.

δʹ. Τί ἠρυθριάσατε πᾶσαι; Οὐ πρὸς πάσας ἡμῖν ὁ λόγος· ἀλλὰ πρὸς τὰς εἰς τὴν θηριωδίαν ἐξελκομένας ταύτην.

Yea, and if she remain incorrigible, yea, though she steal, take care of thy goods, and do not punish her so much. If she be a gossip, silence her. This is the very highest philosophy.

Now, however, some are come to such a height of indecency as to uncover the head, and to drag their maid-servants by the hair.

—Why do ye all blush? I am not addressing myself to all, but to those who are carried away into such brutal conduct.

I think he is returning to talking about the maidservants with Νυνὶ δὲ.. , and returning to addressing the women in the second person with Τί ἠρυθριάσατε.., but I am a little surprised by the notion of wives stealing from husbands. Any thoughts?

Andrew
Andrew Chapman
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Re: σαυτοῦ

Post by Andrew Chapman »

It has been suggested to me by an academic who is defending the notion that τὸ σαυτοῦ ποίει is addressed to the woman regarding her maidservant that:

"σαυτοῦ is a neuter pronominal adjective modifying the (understood) noun "part" or "responsibility" or whatever general idea is represented by the understood noun. It would be like saying in English, "Do what is yours." The pronominal adjective takes its gender not from the person referred to but from the noun it modifies.We know that the noun is neuter because of the definite article τὸ in front of it."

Surely σαυτοῦ is the reflexive pronoun. The pronominal adjective is σὸς and if it was being used here it would be τὸ σόν, as in, for example, Matthew 25:25:

ἴδε ἔχεις τὸ σόν.
See, you have what is yours.

Andrew
Stephen Hughes
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Re: σαυτοῦ

Post by Stephen Hughes »

Andrew Chapman wrote:"σαυτοῦ is a neuter pronominal adjective modifying the (understood) noun "part" or "responsibility" or whatever general idea is represented by the understood noun. It would be like saying in English, "Do what is yours." The pronominal adjective takes its gender not from the person referred to but from the noun it modifies.We know that the noun is neuter because of the definite article τὸ in front of it."
If the αυτοῦ part of the σαυτοῦ is neuter then that is imply that the σε part is too. It is not the same as something like τοῦ σοῦ (πραγματος) - as you have said τὸ σόν πραγμα, it is a reflexive pronoun the basic part is αυτοῦ (of someone's self - usually his / its) and and σε that tells us that it is not the usual 3rd person, but here the 2nd person. Unless there is some new type of grammar on the market, the grammar as presented doesn't allow us to split the two things (grammatical person and pronoun) up into two parts and use them separately.
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
Stephen Carlson
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Re: σαυτοῦ

Post by Stephen Carlson »

Andrew Chapman wrote:It has been suggested to me by an academic who is defending the notion that τὸ σαυτοῦ ποίει is addressed to the woman regarding her maidservant that:
Do you have any reason to believe this academic is competent in Greek? Stephen's explanation is superior.
Stephen C. Carlson, Ph.D.
Melbourne, Australia
Andrew Chapman
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Re: σαυτοῦ

Post by Andrew Chapman »

Thanks, Stephen H, that's helpful to look at its component parts. Incidentally, I read somewhere that σαυτοῦ or σεαυτοῦ is not unknown in the neuter - when speaking to a τέκνον, for example.

Stephen C, I think he might admit to being a little rusty in his Greek..

Andrew
Stephen Hughes
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Re: σαυτοῦ

Post by Stephen Hughes »

Andrew Chapman wrote:I read somewhere that σαυτοῦ or σεαυτοῦ is not unknown in the neuter - when speaking to a τέκνον, for example.
Well, perhaps that is a logical conclusion that someone may have at sometime or other arrived at.

The oblique cases (of both "ο" and "α" stem nouns don't functionally have such a gender distinction, as can be found in the nominative. If you learn't gender from a table, you would say that, "Okay, the genitive of τέκνον "offspring/child" is a neuter genitive, the genitive of σικάριος "dagger" is masculine, but if you think in terms of forms and not in terms of columns in the tables, what difference is there? (On the other hand, the genitive of βάτος "thorn bush" is feminine and sometimes takes different "α" stem form of the adjective.)."

If we keep thinking outside the nice neat tables for a moment and continue to think in terms of forms we find that the really amazing thing about neuters is that the accusative of neuters (at some early point (Pre-Homeric) of the history of the language) jumped up and started taking on (syntactically) nominative roles in the sentence. In Modern Greek in many cases the basic form to work from to get to the other forms is the accusative (and sometimes the nominative has been taken as a copy of the accusative).

The reflexive σαυτοῦ is related to the nominative of the sentence (implied or explicitly written). Using σαυτοῦ forms with a neuter is something of a second jump from that (neuter accusative forms taking on nominative function) first jump. Since neuters could now have the right to take nominative roles they can have a reflexive role within the verbal unit.

BUT that does not make the σαυτοῦ neuter. It is still masculine, but the neuter now has been given the right to use it. σαυτοῦ is part of the verbal unit, only related to the subject via the verb - not of itself - so its gender is not dependent on the subject's gender. [The queen doesn't share her robes. The jester wears the king's robes, but doesn't have the right to design his own new style].
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
Andrew Chapman
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Re: σαυτοῦ

Post by Andrew Chapman »

Thanks, Stephen. I am sorry, I muddied the waters somewhat with my faulty memory. The example of σαυτοῦ in the neuter I was thinking of turned out to be the entry in Liddell and Scott which gives:

φίλον ξύλον, ἔγειρέ μοι σεαυτὸ καὶ γίγνου θρασύ [E.Fr. 693]

Being in the accusative case, it's gender is unambiguous here. In principle, I would have thought this neuter form might occur when addressing a τέκνον just as much as when talking to a tree, but quite possibly there is no actual usage of this sort.

Andrew
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