[b-greek] Re: Wallace on Ga 4:14

From: clayton stirling bartholomew (c.s.bartholomew@worldnet.att.net)
Date: Mon Sep 18 2000 - 23:37:38 EDT


on 09/18/00 7:50 PM, CEP7@aol.com wrote:

> Without quoting everyone else's question and response, I think you ha\ve
> missed Wallace's point in discussing this passage. Let me supply the material
> previous to the quote in the other posts . . .

{snip all of BYTB quote}

> Wallace's point is that the corollary applies to AGGELOS KURIOU/QEOU. Thus,
> grammatically speaking, it is more likely that AGGELOS QEOU in Gal 4:14
> should be translated the angel of God (Definite-Definite).
>
> Charles Powell, Ph.D.
> DTS

Charles,

I was not really intending to investigate this question according the
methodology which is found in the tome from Zondervan. Several years ago I
discovered that there is something like a galactic separation between the
Zondervan team (Wallace, Mounce, . . .) and the way I am approaching
language study in general and in particular Hellenistic Greek. Not only did
I miss the point in Wallace (you are right!), I am intentionally choosing
to ignore it and going my own merry way looking at the problem from various
angles.

In my last post on this topic I was playing around with two ideas and
getting them a little mixed up. One idea was definite and indefinite uses of
AGGELOS and the other idea was the equivalence of AGGELOS QEOU and AGGELOS
KURIOU. These two ideas were mixed up and confounded as I discussed the
subject. My posts to b-greek are part of an exploratory process and I make a
lot of mistakes along the way and admit it openly.

I wish we could just discuss issues on this list and keep personalities out
it. Every time someone quotes one of these living authors who is a professor
somewhere we get all their friends and associates rising up to "defend the
fort" which makes detached discussion of the issues nearly impossible.

I cannot argue with Wallace and Mounce, we don't even talk the same language
or live in the same universe. I picked up Wallace from the library today and
took a quick spin through the section on Greek articles tonight and just
convinced myself once again that the problem here is methodology at the
macro level, not details. Wallace has a lot of valuable details but I fail
to detect anything that could be reasonably described as a "theoretical
model" governing the presentation in this book. It seems to be an
encyclopedic collection of grammatical lore from the past two millennia, but
there is no method or model that ties all this lore together.

Anyway, you are right about one thing, I do not claim to understand what
Wallace is doing. My only comment on Wallace was that his view of Gal 4:14
was swimming upstream. He admits this himself, by saying that most of the
English translations and commentaries disagree with him on this topic.

Thanks for your clarification. I am sure there are lots of seminary students
that will benifit from it.

Clay

--
Clayton Stirling Bartholomew
Three Tree Point
P.O. Box 255 Seahurst WA 98062



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