Can statements in 1 Corinthians 4:8 be rhetorical questions?

[cwconrad]

1 Corinthians 4:8 says:

ἤδη κεκορεσμένοι ἐστέ ἤδη ἐπλουτήσατε χωρὶς ἡμῶν ἐβασιλεύσατε καὶ ὄφελόν γε ἐβασιλεύσατε ἵνα καὶ ἡμεῖς ὑμῖν συνβασιλεύσωμεν

Most English translations take the short phrases to be sarcastic statements ...I was wondering if those phrases could be questions instead, like such:

Have you been filled? Are you now rich? Have you started reigning without us?

After pondering the question for a while, I am inclined to think that there's not really much difference, if there's any, between a rhetorical question and a sarcastic statement; the sarcastic statement seems to imply deep skepticism about the assertion and to carry a tacit "nest-ce pas?" with it: ἤδη κεκορεσμένοι ἐστέ ἤδη ἐπλουτήσατε: "You're altogether sated (aren't you?)! You've gotten rich (haven't you?)!
I've noted heretofore in this forum that I sense a similar sarcastic hint in the "Thanksgiving" part of this letter:

Εὐχαριστῶ τῷ θεῷ μου πάντοτε περὶ ὑμῶν ἐπὶ τῇ χάριτι τοῦ θεοῦ τῇ δοθείσῃ ὑμῖν ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ, 5 ὅτι ἐν παντὶ ἐπλουτίσθητε ἐν αὐτῷ, ἐν παντὶ λόγῳ καὶ πάσῃ γνώσει, 6 καθὼς τὸ μαρτύριον τοῦ Χριστοῦ ἐβεβαιώθη ἐν ὑμῖν, 7 ὥστε ὑμᾶς μὴ ὑστερεῖσθαι ἐν μηδενὶ χαρίσματι ἀπεκδεχομένους τὴν ἀποκάλυψιν τοῦ κυρίου ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ·

There's hardly another letter of Paul so rich in rhetorical power as this one.

[Barry Hofstetter]

What Carl said... However, I simply wanted to point out that there is little difference in effect here between a rhetorical statement and a rhetorical question. There is nothing in the Greek per se which would suggest a question. It's more an issue of how the translator wants to express Paul's sarcasm in the target language.

[Stephen Carlson]

Or more broadly, how can you tell if a positive phrase (lacking οὐκ/μὴ) is a question?

Presumably they could tell by the tone of voice, but without punctuation there's nothing in the writing system or syntax to convey it, except for the occasional and option particle.

[Wes Wood]

I don't believe the audience would necessarily have "unambiguously" understood what is written here. We see examples almost daily of sarcastic or other types of conversational subtleties that are missed even with the benefit of nonverbal and verbal cues and intonations. I don't believe there is any definitive way to know in this or similar instances. I would suspect to find some degree of ambiguity present in all languages written or spoken.

[Pat Ferguson]

Greek Majority Text shows commas (,), full stop (.), and colon (:), but no question marks (;).
Charles Van der Pool's Apostolic Bible Polyglot shows only question marks (?).
ESV shows only exclamation points (!).
N-A1904 shows only colons (:).
Berry's Interlinear GNT and N-A28 show commas (,) and colon (:).

Rhetorical questions? Skepticisms? Proper pointing seems subjective.

[Stephen Carlson]

Yes, but the recipients of the epistle would have unambiguously read it one way or the other.

Well, the original recipient would have the letter read aloud. If the reader was the letter carrier on Paul's behalf, then he or she would know how to intone it.

What cues are there (given that there are no punctuations in the original) that allow us to tell whether a phrase is a question or a statement? For example, in English, when we begin with "do you...", it's pretty clear that it's a question even though we don't hear the rest of the question or see the question mark.

The inversion of the subject and verb in English is a syntactic clue that there is a question. It does not work that way in Greek. There is no syntactic clue to be had. (I'm talking about yes-no questions. Of course, interrogative pronouns are a great clue that we have a question.)

[Wes Wood]

Well, the original recipient would have the letter read aloud. If the reader was the letter carrier on Paul's behalf, then he or she would know how to intone it.

Good point. But this also depends somewhat on the carrier being present or involved when the letter was penned. I don't recall anything in the letter that would indicate this definitively one way or another. If we assume that Sosthenes acted as the partial amanuensis and deliverer, it makes good sense. If perhaps the delegation in 16:17 returned with the letter, it may go either way. If a messenger of convenience were used, he might get it right or wrong. In any event, thanks for the thought.

[Stephen Carlson]

What resources can I consult that tackle the question of how to recognize questions in greek?

Good luck with that. You can read the most detailed grammars in the world and they won't tell you the answer you want. It's ambiguous and you have to make a careful exegetical argument based on the context that reading a sentence as a question makes the sense of Paul's epistle.

[Stephen Hughes]

I don't think the epistles were written so that they could only be understood with the help of intonations of someone who was present during authorship. The author (both human and divine) would write in a way that the epistle could be understood by most readers, especially if it was meant to be passed around and read in different churches.

That statement is a fairly broad stroke of the brush. WE are some of those readers, and belong to those Churches now and your asking this question suggests that we, as readers of the epistle do have difficulty.

What resources can I consult that tackle the question of how to recognize questions in greek?

Good luck with that. You can read the most detailed grammars in the world and they won't tell you the answer you want. It's ambiguous and you have to make a careful exegetical argument based on the context that reading a sentence as a question makes the sense of Paul's epistle.

Not only in the New Testament. Greek is a language like any other. It has its limitations of expression, just like any other. Modern Greek shares this characteristic of un-marked questions with the Koine Greek of the earlier period. We should aim to work hard for fluency in the language if you want to recognise things.

I think languages have enough nuance that by using certain vocabulary, word order, and word patterns (= inflections, tenses?? or rhetorical constructions?? SGH), a fluent immersed reader would be clear on what the epistle is saying, at least semantically.

The use of ὄφελον is clear enough indication that this statement is rhetorical. The use of the indicative tense aorist ἐβασιλεύσατε indicates that the writer thinks that that (imagined) situation is removed from the present tangible (sensory) reality. If it is rhetorical as indicated by ὄφελον, and it is in the writer's opinion not the present situation, as indicated by (the second) ἐβασιλεύσατε.

Another thing is the phrase χωρὶς ἡμῶν. Does it mean, "all by yourselves", as in "(So...) you ascended to the throne all by yourselves (did you?)." or does it mean "without inviting us", as in "(So...) you are all kings now, and we are not (are you?)", or perhaps "before we did" (when Jesus comes in his kingdom).

For a made up (but not necessarily wrong) example: the presence of ἤδη with 2nd person verbs, combined with the absence of δὲ, might have indicated to the fluent reader that these are questions.

Rather than just thinking of ἤδη as a sort of calque translation "already", try rendering it as, "have finished ....-ing", or as "completely" (more exactly "completedly". In that way, we can see more clearly that its use is hyperbolic. Hyperbolae are featres of rhetorical language (along with rhetorical questions).

To address your original question as to whether these uses of rhetoric could be rhetorical questions? I think they are rhetorical hyperbolae. They are not followed by a bathos (βάθος "understatement") which would have given them added rhetorical effect, as we see in

Οὐχ ὅτι ἤδη ἔλαβον, ἢ ἤδη τετελείωμαι· διώκω δέ, εἰ καὶ καταλάβω ἐφ’ ᾧ καὶ κατελήφθην ὑπὸ τοῦ χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ

becasue the authour wants to keep the hyperbolic feeling going through all three statements, rather than zig-zagging our feelings up and down as he does in various other places in the epistles.

Possible βάθη could have been, (but weren't), "You are already filled, {while we are still hungry and thristy (for righteousness)}" cf.

Μακάριοι οἱ πεινῶντες καὶ διψῶντες τὴν δικαιοσύνην · ὅτι αὐτοὶ χορτασθήσονται

χορτάζειν colloquial, κορέσαι (κεκορεσθαι) formal - higher register also sudgesting rhetorical context. Also "you have already become rich, {while we are still poor (in spirit)}" cf.

Μακάριοι οἱ πτωχοὶ τῷ πνεύματι · ὅτι αὐτῶν ἐστιν ἡ βασιλεία τῶν οὐρανῶν .

When he does reach a bathos, it is on the third one about that THEY (from his perspective "WE") could reign together with THEM. cf.

Ὁ δὲ εἶπεν αὐτῇ, Τί θέλεις; Λέγει αὐτῷ, Εἰπὲ ἵνα καθίσωσιν οὗτοι οἱ δύο υἱοί μου, εἷς ἐκ δεξιῶν σου, καὶ εἷς ἐξ εὐωνύμων σου, ἐν τῇ βασιλείᾳ σου.

In oher words, something like, "Just whose kingdom is it anyway?". "We are looking forward to reigning with YOU, NOT (letdown) = Jesus is he whom we will reign with".

I think they are rhetorically used hyperbolae with the third one followed by a bathos, not rhetorical questions.

[David Lim]

The author (both human and divine) would write in a way that the epistle could be understood by most readers, especially if it was meant to be passed around and read in different churches. I think languages have enough nuance that by using certain vocabulary, word order, and word patterns, a fluent immersed reader would be clear on what the epistle is saying, at least semantically.

The first statement of yours is an assumption, which may not be so easy to justify as you might have assumed. Your second statement is reasonable, but what if a rhetorical question and a rhetorical statement have almost exactly the same semantic meaning? Then there would be no need for the reader to attempt to distinguish between the two. Even in English not everything is a statement or a question... We see people using "...?", "?!", "!?!?" and so on, which seems to suggest that some exclamations are 'in-between'...