Re: Granville-Sharp in Matt 5:20 and Lk 1:2

From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Sat Jul 25 1998 - 19:46:17 EDT


At 2:39 PM -0700 7/25/98, dalmatia@eburg.com wrote:
>Stevens, Charles C wrote:
>
>> If TWN GRAMMATEWN KAI FARISAIWN is correctly translated "of the scribes
>> of the pharisees", where is the rendering of the conjunction "KAI" into
>> English, and what is its function in the Greek text?
>
>When I first started following this thread, I read the above passage
>as having both nouns joined by KAI as being governed by TWN, with the
>resultant implicit TWN modifying FARISAIWN. This option has not
>arisen in this thread, to my knowledge, and I am wondering why.

Since I am in the nasty habit of thinking first and consulting
"authorities" later, I pondered this one for a minute, thinking: "There's
something that everybody is taking for granted: what is it and is it right
to take it for granted?" My tentative conclusion (and I still have
consulted no "authorities") is this: although the Scribes and the Pharisees
do seem to be two distinct groups, they seem to be "lumped together"
regularly as belonging to hyper-legalist categories. The Scribes are
scholars of the Torah, intensely concerned with the right understanding of
each provision of the Law, while the Pharisees, even if they themselves are
not homogeneous, nevertheless are deeply concerned with strict observance
of the Law as rightly interpreted. If this is so, then might it not be that
the single article does indeed refer to the two groups as constituting a
single category of "the hyper-legalists"?

As I pondered this possibility, I recalled another passage over which we've
had considerable discussion from time to time: Lk 1:2 the phrase hOI AP'
ARCHS AUTOPTAI KAI hUPHRETAI GENOMENOI TOU LOGOU, a phrase which we
understand to function as a whole as subject to the verb introducing verse
2: PAREDOSAN. Here the question is whether hOI AUTOPTAI KAI hUPHRETAI TOU
LOGOU refers to a single category or to two categories of evangelists.

(Let me add that I currently understand this verse as construed thus: I see
AUTOPTAI KAI hUPHRETAI TOU LOGOU as predicate nouns to GENOMENOI AP' ARCHS
and understand the whole thus: "those who were (hOI GENOMENOI) from the
start eye-witnesses and abettors of the word." Of course, if the phrase
AUTOPTAI KAI hUPHRETAI is understood as a predicate-noun phrase to hOI
GENOMENOI, then we don't really have the Granville-Sharp rule coming into
play, since the article hOI functions with GENOMENOI to make a substantive
and is not an article governing the two nouns AUTOPTAI and hUPHRETAI.)

Now the question has been raised repeatedly: are the AUTOPTAI to be
understood as identical with the hUPHRETAI? Personally I don't think so,
but I concede that those who think they are a single group have an argument
that is plausible enough; I rather think we have the eye-witnesses who have
attested what they have seen and those who have come to faith without
themselves having witnessed the ministry of Jesus, including the death and
resurrection; i.e., I think we have the two "blessed" groups spoken of by
Jesus to Thomas in John 20:29. Nevertheless, it might be argued that these
two groups--eyewitness-reporters and evangelists who were not
eyewitnesses--constitute a single category of "transmitters of the gospel"
upon whom the composer of Luke's gospel depends for the traditions about
Jesus' ministry which he reports in the gospel thus prefaced.

To sum up this tentative proposition briefly: I'm supposing that the phrase
GRAMMATEWN KAI FARISAIWN in Mt 5:20 indicates two groups constituting a
"hyper-legalist" category in a manner similar to that in which the phrase
AUTOPTAI KAI hUPHRETAI TOU LOGOU in Lk 1:2 indicates two groups
constituting a single "transmitter of the gospel" category.

I'm not really sure that all this is really necessary to explain the single
article TWN in Mt 5:20 governing the two genitive plurals linked by KAI,
but it's another consideration, at least.

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University
Summer: 1647 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/

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