Re: 2 Cor. 6:16 Sentence Construction?

From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Wed Mar 25 1998 - 06:23:57 EST


At 10:16 PM -0600 3/24/98, clayton stirling bartholomew wrote:
>justin wrote:
>>
>> In verse 6:16 HMEIS GAR NAOS QEOU ESMEV ZWNTOS, KAQWS EIPEN hO QEOS hOTI
>>
>> How is ESMEN functioning in this verse? It really seems out of place in the
>> sentence construction. I have looked at several grammars and had no luck
>> finding a solution. Does ESMEN function as a pointer to the OT prophecy in
>> the latter part of verse 16?
>
>I haven't seen an answer to this on the list. I am a little puzzled about what
>Justin is puzzled about. There are some textual variants here.
>
>hHMEIS . . . ESMEV is read by Aleph* B D* 33 81* it(d) cop(sa,bo) . . .
>
>hUMEIS . . . ESTE is read by p46 C D(c) G K Psi 641 Maj Lect it(g,61) . . .
>
>hHMEIS . . . ESMEV is the more difficult (but not terribly difficult) reading
>and it explains the other reading as an attempt to tidy up the text a little.
>The context would make the second person plural a little easier than the first
>person plural, but Alford, Hodge and Meyer all treated the difference between
>these readings as a wash in terms of exegesis.
>
>I think Justin's question may have had to do with some perceived syntactical
>difficulty, but if such a difficulty exists I have overlooked it. Perhaps the
>word order has given pause? The equative verb coming between QEOU and ZWNTOS?

Yes, I too assumed that the problem had to do with the word-order, but the
position of ESMEN (we do normally use N for Nu) is not extraordinary. One
might perhaps expect an article before ZWNTOS, assuming this is an
attributive participle, "a temple of the living God."
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics/Washington University
One Brookings Drive/St. Louis, MO, USA 63130/(314) 935-4018
Home: 7222 Colgate Ave./St. Louis, MO 63130/(314) 726-5649
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu OR cconrad@yancey.main.nc.us
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/



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