Philippians 4:3 question

[Nickb]

Hi. I am not familiar with Greek grammar, so I can’t figure this out for myself.
Philippians 4:3
ναὶ ἐρωτῶ καὶ σέ, γνήσιε σύνζυγε, συνλαμβάνου αὐταῖς, αἵτινες ἐν τῷ εὐαγγελίῳ συνήθλησάν μοι μετὰ καὶ Κλήμεντος καὶ τῶν λοιπῶν συνεργῶν μου, ὧν τὰ ὀνόματα ἐν βίβλῳ ζωῆς.

“3 And I intreat thee also, true yokefellow, help those women which laboured with me in the gospel, with Clement also, and with other my fellowlabourers, whose names are in the book of life.”

My question is: when it says “whose names are in the book of life” is that phrase describing the fellowlabourers or is it describing “those women”. I can’t figure this out and can’t justify any answer I come up with.

Thanks

[Barry Hofstetter]

Hi. I am not familiar with Greek grammar, so I can’t figure this out for myself.
Philippians 4:3
ναὶ ἐρωτῶ καὶ σέ, γνήσιε σύνζυγε, συνλαμβάνου αὐταῖς, αἵτινες ἐν τῷ εὐαγγελίῳ συνήθλησάν μοι μετὰ καὶ Κλήμεντος καὶ τῶν λοιπῶν συνεργῶν μου, ὧν τὰ ὀνόματα ἐν βίβλῳ ζωῆς.

“3 And I intreat thee also, true yokefellow, help those women which laboured with me in the gospel, with Clement also, and with other my fellowlabourers, whose names are in the book of life.”

My question is: when it says “whose names are in the book of life” is that phrase describing the fellowlabourers or is it describing “those women”. I can’t figure this out and can’t justify any answer I come up with.

Thanks

First of all Nick make sure you are following B-Greek's "Real Names Policy." Introduce yourself in the Introductions forum or tell a moderator your real name (first/last) and we can change it to your screen name.

The big answer to your question is to get familiar with Greek as a language. Learn the syntax and grammar. That's one of the major reasons B-Greek is here! To answer your question specifically, I don't think anything in the grammar or syntax specifically helps, but the sense of it in the flow of thought indicates that the relative clause applies to all the preceding.

[Stephen Carlson]

Interesting syntactic ambiguity. It could be either, but it’s descriptive not contrastive, so even if it attaches just to the women (who are topical) it does not imply that Clement and the others aren’t written in the book of life.

The thing about ambiguity is to remember that the utterance just has to be clear enough to meet Paul’s communicative purpose, not to answer each and every we might about the text.