Re: 1 Thessalonians 5:23

From: Daniel Ria–o (danielrr@mad.servicom.es)
Date: Thu Dec 11 1997 - 14:18:26 EST


Thanks to Rolf Furuli for his detailed and very interesting posting. I
would like to do one correction and a suggestion.

Rolf Furuli wrote:
>(Daniel`s suggestion that only TO PNEUMA is qualified by hUMWN is
>grammatically possible but is communicatively so strange that grammatical
>precedents must be produced to accept it.).

I agree completely and I think I am the only Daniel who wrote about it (my
apologies if I am mistaken in that): Only that I never wrote "that only TO
PNEUMA is qualified by hUMWN". What I wrote is:

I have another suggestion to do: I believe that *o(lo/klhron* is
predicative, and almost certainly it is *not* a substantive here, as Carl
W. Conrad noted; but it must not be taken all the three nouns, as TDNT
says, but only with *to\ pneu=ma*, and *h( yuch\ kai\ to\ sw=ma* are
adverbially modified by *a)me/mptws*. Then we have not only another case of
chiasmus, but also an ellegant "variatio" in the adverbial-predicative
construction: an adjective with the first member, a real adverb with the
second and third. I think this is the sense of the Nova Vulgata translation.

i.e.: only *to\ pneu=ma* is qualified by *o(lo/klhron* (but nothing is
said about *u(mw=n*). My apologies if my syntax suggests other
interpretation.

And now my pure syntactical comments on Rolf explanation (just minutiae):
>>>>
Let us look at 1 Thess 5:23 again. We start with the verb. Who is the agent
in the passive construction of THREW? The agent is God, and the prayer is
that God must keep..., and here we need a complement, either a predicative
or an adverbial. There are two candidates, hOLOKLHRON and AMEMPTWS. We may
take a look at 3:13 to learn from the similarities and dissimilarities. In
this verse we find AMEMPTOS, which is an adjective qualifying KARDIAS, and
which indicates an unblamable STATE. In 5:23, however, we do not find the
adjective but the adverb AMEMPTWS which signify a MANNER rather than a
state. It would be strange to pray that God`s keeping should be blameless,
because all he does is without fault, and therefore is it not natural that
AMEMPTWS is a complement of THRHQEIH but rather is a part of the adverbial,
being qualified itself by EN THi PAROUSIA..The following comparison between
the adverbials of 3:13 and 5:23 is striking:
<<<<
        Since we have a verb in the passive voice, we do need to look for a
subject, all the other complementizers being optative. We have three nouns
that qualify, coordinated by "kai/" : *pneu=ma*, *yuch/* and *sw=ma*.
Before we start considering *o(lo/klhron* as another subject we should
have, at least, another coordinative and very probably an article (I leave
semantic reasons aside, which IMO also advocates against *o(lo/klhron* a
subst.).
        On the other hand a verb like *thre/w* with the meaning "servare,
conservare" has all the semantic characteristics of a verb constructed with
a predicative complement (=PC: see other example of objective PC in
*a)/spilon e(auto\n threi=n* Ep.Iac.1.27). Since it is in the passive
voice, only subjective PCs are expected.
        Now it is very important to bear in mind two things:
        A) although only a word with the grammatical accidence of gender,
noun and case can be a "real" predicative" (to concert with the subject, as
in this case, or with a complement of the verb), real adverbs also accept
this construction. The is PC characterised for a binary nature: they affect
*at the same time* the verb and a nominal syntagm syntactically near the
verb (prototypically the CD, but other complements are accepted). Many
examples of adjectives and adverbs in the same position(even coordinated)
in Ros, Joannes Gerardus Antonius. 1938. Die metabolhv (Variatio) als
Stilprinzip des Thukydides. Edited by E. Drerup. Vol. I, Rhetorische
Studien. Paderborn: N.V. Centrale Drukkerij Nijmegen.
        B) Since the verb is in the passive voice, *a)me/mptws* in a
predicative construction is very unlikely to be referred to other member of
the sentence but the subject. That's why I think that Rolf's argument that
"It would be strange to pray that God`s keeping should be blameless,
because all he does is without fault" is semantically correct, but
grammatically not relevant, since we do not expect the adverb to modify an
otherwise elliptic agent *a)po\ [tou=] Qeou=*. *a)me/mptws*, if taken as
an adv. in PC construction, must affect the subject (IMO only *yuch\* and
*sw=ma*: "et anima et corpus sine querela ... servetur" i.e. *a)/mempta
thrhqei/h tau=ta*
        Daniel.

___________________________________________________________________
Daniel Rian~o Rufilanchas
c. Santa Engracia 52, 7 dcha.
28010-Madrid
Espan~a
e-mail: danielrr@mad.servicom.es



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