Re: 1 Cor 7:10, leave or be left

From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Thu Oct 07 1999 - 06:22:17 EDT


At 11:27 AM +0900 10/7/99, Rion K. Reece wrote:
>Hello,
>
>My name is Rion K. Reece. I live and work (teaching English and Bible)
>in Tokyo Japan. I have been lurking for nigh on a year now, and this is
>my first post. I am, in the parlance of the group, a $B!H(Bwee
>Greeker,$B!I(B
>so please be patient with my questions.
>
>In 1 Corinthians 7:10b I read, GUNAIKA APO ANDROS MH XWRISQHNAI this
>verb is in the passive voice; why is it not, $B!H(Ba wife must not be
>divorced by/from her husband$B!I(B?
>
>Also, the accusative and genitive combination is a little strange to me.
> Is the case of ANDROS simply being controlled by the APO?
>
>Likewise, in 7:11 EAN DE KAI XWRISQHi$B!D(BOnce again a passive. Why is
>this not $B!H(Bbut if (she) is divorced (by her husband)$B!I(B?

You have some characters in your message ($B!H) which don't translate in
my mailing program to something intelligible--it looks like quotation marks
is what it might be, but it doesn't translate into ordinary ASCII--maybe
it's curly quotes.

As for the substance, yes, I think these infinitives CWRISQHNAI in these
verses are normally understood as passive infinitives although I personally
think it would be better to understand them as having a middle force (my
view is that in verbs of this sort the -QH- forms have replaced the older
Middle/Passive forms in the aorist and future)--so I think the sense is
"get divorced" or "get oneself a divorce (from)." The APO + genitive in
these instances is NOT an agent construction ("by her husband" or "by his
wife") but the regular usage of APO with genitive in the sense "from" or
"away." So I'd understand 1 Cor 10:7b as "a wife should not get herself
separated from her husband" and similarly in 1 Cor 11. In sum, YES, the
case of ANDROS is governed by APO; the preposition APO never takes any case
OTHER than genitive.

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
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/

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