Re: RENEW

From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Fri Apr 28 2000 - 08:48:18 EDT


<x-charset iso-8859-1>At 7:29 AM -0500 4/28/00, Richard Hobson wrote:
>Hi Everyone,
>
>Thank you very much for your responses, which have been highly instructive.
>You have realised that the focus of my attentions has been Heb 6:6 "to
>renew them again unto repentance"
>
>Would it be correct to understand the placing of PALIN before ANAKAINIZW to
>imply repeated instances of renewal, or to be made whole on more than one
>occasion, etc.?

Well, the most normal position for an adverb is right in front of what it
governs; I'd think the question to be asked here is not about the position
but whether there is any distinct sense to PALIN in this instance. My own
sense is that it is redundant and placed there for rhetorical emphasis: it
doesn't add a semantic dimension to what's already clearly present in the
prefix ANA- of ANAKAINIZW; in fact, one might argue that even the prefix
ANA- is redundant because the sense of KAINIZW already implies "make new,"
since I would suppose one can KAINIZEIN only that which is PALAION.
Although one might in theory argue that the prefix makes ANAKAINIZW refer
to repeated "renewing," I don't think that's necessarily so, although in
some texts (I don't mean that are really comparable to this one) there are
unquestionable indications not just of recurrence but of recursion--I'm
thinking of a poem of Sappho, an invocation to Aphrodite wherein she asks
the goddess to come once again, "just as you did before"--on which occasion
Aphrodite said to Sappho, "who is it that you want me to make responsive to
you THIS TIME, Sappho?"). So I really think that the PALIN is for emphasis
by redundancy--I think redundancy for emphasis is a pretty common
phenomenon; think of Yogi Berra's "DÈjý vu all over again!" Moreover, think
of the problematic logic of supposing that one or two "renewals unto
repentance" are conceivable but not more than that--or of Jesus' reductio
ad absurdum of Peter's suggestion that sevenfold forgiveness is an
appropriate limiting number.

-- 

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

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