I’m sorry I haven’t written much lately. I’m working 40 hours a week and all my free time after that is going toward packing up our stuff for our big move westward. We’ll be in the Vancouver area a week from Sunday. We’ve got a small one bedroom apartment about 15 minutes from school.

I have several posts in the works, including a couple reviews - which I’m sure publishers are beginning to wonder about.

Now, this is a very exciting day in digital publishing, but I just don’t know how many people will be able to afford it.

Anchor Yale Bible for Logos Bible Software

Personally, I think it would have been better to split the set into parts.

Would anyone be interested in a “like new” copy of Biblical Exegesis in the Apostolic Period by Richard Longenecker for $15 including shipping?

I want to replace my print copy with a digital copy, which Logos is publishing in a few days.

I am seriously curious about what you guys think of the most recent post from the Gender Blog:

Olympic Competition and Manhood and Womanhood, Part 3: Girls and Sports? A Matter of Principles

Its really hard for me to take a post like this seriously.

Now on this series in general, I could really appreciate (and I mean that) Part II.

Regarding Part I, its hard for me to understand why mothers cannot introduce such topics to discuss with the children. Even if one considers the husband to be the leader of the house, is not the wife over the children as well.

Does anyone know if there’s an online Greek text of Origen’s De Principiis? Is there an extant Greek text?

Its hard to write things during the summer when I’m between schools and working a crappy job.

But I’m trying.

I finished reading Peter Enns’ book Inspiration and Incarnation (still on sale at WTS’s bookstore). Its not as crazy as some have claimed, though I understand what the rioting is about. Nonetheless, Enns has good things to say; things that need to be said. I’d say that its definitely worth taking to the time to visit Dr. Enns’ blog as well here.

James Spinti asked me if I had any thoughts about Stanley Porter’s thesis about the Greek verbal system in my criticisms of Caragounis’ criticisms of Porter. I still haven’t finished Porter’s book on verbal aspect and I have a million thoughts in general about things said in this debate. But for now, I’ll say that even with Porter’s claim that the Greek verbal system doesn’t express time (which I’m still unsure about), his thesis is significantly less revolutionary than he and others would like to think it is. In fact, his greatest contribution is not any of his opinions about the Greek language, but that he has brought linguistics back to Koine Greek studies in a central way. There have been others who have made small contributions over the past several decades (e.g. Louw, Nida, Barr, Funk, etc.), but Porter has made linguistic study and Greek partners in a way that we haven’t seen since Robertson. The grammarians of the past century were truly linguists. In fact, Moulton was probably more linguist than he was Greek grammarian.

But I’ll have more on all of that later (hopefully mid-August) when I review Moulton Howard, & Turner’s Greek grammar for Logos Bible Software.

Signing off for now…

Mike

PS - what would a contemporary description of Greek morphology look like? Would we still have principle parts? I doubt it. Something I’m thinkg about / working on…

My power’s been out for several days from Monday through Thursday evening. We had 94 mile per hour winds on Monday morning at 5:45 AM.

I’m back online now and I hope to get some writing done this weekend.

I said previously that I thought Caragounis’ criticisms against Porter on the question of Aspect and Time in the Greek verb were not as good as they could have been. Okay, perhaps I was a little more extreme in my words than that. Regardless, let me explain.

Caragounis argues that the fact that no Greek grammarian or Greek in general has ever made such a claim is evidence that the Greek verb does in fact express time. He response rather angrily to Porter’s words that Greeks may have been fooled themselves regarding the grammar of their language (esp. 326ff.). But the fact is that the purpose of native speakers is not to ask them whether time exists or not, but for elliciting data for analysis. Simply asking native speakers questions about what tenses there are in a give language will easily result in inaccurate information.

To give a couple examples from English:

1) English Verb Tenses

English speakers think that our verbs mark past, present, and future, when they only denote past and present. The future cannot be called a tense because it is not marked on the verb. Tenses are a morphological part of the verb. Future meaning is marked by an auxillary. Thus while the English language expresses past, present, and future meaning, English verbs are only marked by past and non-past tenses. The non-past tense then combines with an auxillary in order to express future meaning.

2) The English Vowel System

if you ask any English speaker how many vowels there are in English, he or she will tell you there are five. But this is also false. There are five symbols that mark English vowels in the orthography, but there are actually 11 different vowel sounds: i, ɪ, ɛ, e, æ, a, ɑ, ɔ, o, ʌ, u (these vowel symbols might not appear on your screen unless you’re using an uptodate unicode font).

In both these cases, English speakers have been fooled by their own analysis and language! The very thing that Caragounis claims is rediculous in reference to Greek.

Now again, I must say that I have not been convinced by Porter’s arguments (particularly because he really doesn’t spend to much time to give evidence either - at least not that kind of evidence that my lingusitics professors demanded from me in my papers). But if Caragounis is going to demolish Porter’s view, he needs to find firmer footings for his argument. Simply saying that Greek native speakers believe time is expressed in the verb forms does not mean it does.

[11] And he gifted some to be apostles, prophets, evangelists, and pastors and teachers [12] for the effective training of God’s people - toward building up Christ’s body [13] until we all attain unity in faith and knowledge of the Son of God and until we reach completion - the standard of maturity that is the fullness of Christ. [14] He gifted these people so that we might no longer be children who are carried and tossed about by waves and every wind of teaching by the craftiness of people and their deceitful cleverness, [15] but instead by speaking the truth in love, we might grow toward that one perfectly whole person, who is the head - Christ. [16] Because of him the whole body, joined and held together by all the supporting ligaments, by the operation of each individual part, produces growth, building itself up in love.

17 Τοῦτο οὖν λέγω καὶ μαρτύρομαι ἐν κυρίῳ,
So now I must urge you in the Lord

μηκέτι ὑμᾶς περιπατεῖν,
not to walk

καθὼς καὶ τὰ ἔθνη περιπατεῖ ἐν ματαιότητι τοῦ νοὸς αὐτῶν,
as those gentiles walk with their empty heads,

18 ἐσκοτωμένοι τῇ διανοίᾳ
[18] blinded by their own thoughts

ὄντες ἀπηλλοτριωμένοι τῆς ζωῆς τοῦ θεοῦ διὰ τὴν ἄγνοιαν τὴν οὖσαν ἐν αὐτοῖς . . .
and alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them . . .

. . . διὰ τὴν πώρωσιν τῆς καρδίας αὐτῶν 19 οἵτινες ἀπηλγηκότες ἑαυτοὺς παρέδωκαν τῇ ἀσελγείᾳ εἰς ἐργασίαν ἀκαθαρσίας πάσης ἐν πλεονεξίᾳ.
. . . and their calloused hearts. [19] These people, having lost all feeling, have betrayed themselves to sensuality with all kinds of sexual perversion and greed.

This section marks another transition to exhortation. The previous section of the text focuses on the theology of the unity of the church as the body of Christ. But here with the words Τοῦτο οὖν λέγω (therefore, I say this), Paul shifts to challenge and exhort his audience to action. They’ve got two options. They follow God or the unbelievers. Paul wants them to choose God’s way, but he begins with the negative. μαρτύρομαι (I exhort/urge [you]) can mean either testify/bear witness or exhort/implore. In this case, its the latter.

The ἐν κυρίῳ (in the Lord) is an adjunct prepositional phrase. The phrase is intended to express Paul’s earnestness. By bringing Christ to his audiences’ mind, Paul brings them back to the previous verses where Christ is the standard of spiritual maturity and growth to which they are to seek. The infinitival clause, μηκέτι ὑμᾶς περιπατεῖν (not to walk), functions as the content of Paul’s exhortation. It is the complement of the verb, μαρτύρομαι (exhort/urge). The point, of course, deals with the manner of life Paul seeks for his audience to live.

Paul’s use of περιπατέω (walk) functions as a conceptual metaphor, which was very popular throughout all of Jewish Literature, especially in the Old Testament Wisdom and Prophets. Though a growing number of English translations provide the translations of live for this verb, there is good reason to believe that its basic meaning of walk should be used. For one, the metaphor in of itself, is easily understandable to the English reader without significant difficulty. Secondly, the fact that this is a conceptual metaphor (rather than a simple one used once and dropped by the way side) makes it incredibly difficult (if not impossible) to translation. The walking metaphor goes well beyond the use of this word and is implicit throughout the cotext of the next several chapters. Conceptual metaphors function at a discourse level and must be translated at a discourse level. Since some of the other parts of the metaphor would not be recognizable in English (cf. below) it becomes even more necessary for the translation to maintain the concept of walking in English. Translations that do not, such as the [T]NIV, NRSV, and NET, loose connections within this passage itself through much of chapter 5 and also important connections with the Wisdom Literature and Prophetic Literature traditions of the Old Testament where the paths of wisdom/righteousness and folly/wickedness are so visibly present.

καθὼς καὶ τὰ ἔθνη περιπατεῖ ἐν ματαιότητι τοῦ νοὸς αὐτῶν (as those gentiles walk with their empty heads) is a adverbial clause denoting the manner of walk Paul desires his audience to avoid with the prepositional phrase describing the manner in which they walk. The following two participial clauses in verse 18 (#1: ἐσκοτωμένοι τῇ διανοίᾳ & #2: ὄντες ἀπηλλοτριωμένοι τῆς ζωῆς τοῦ θεοῦ διὰ τὴν ἄγνοιαν τὴν οὖσαν ἐν αὐτοῖς, διὰ τὴν πώρωσιν τῆς καρδίας αὐτῶν) function in the same way: … the gentiles walk:

• with their empty heads (ἐν ματαιότητι τοῦ νοὸς αὐτῶν)
• blinded by their thoughts (ἐσκοτωμένοι τῇ διανοίᾳ)
• as foreigners of the life of God because of their own ignorance and the calloused hearts (ὄντες ἀπηλλοτριωμένοι τῆς ζωῆς τοῦ θεοῦ διὰ τὴν ἄγνοιαν τὴν οὖσαν ἐν αὐτοῖς διὰ τὴν πώρωσιν τῆς καρδίας αὐτῶν).

Whether there is any significant semantic difference on the basis of Paul’s use of one prepositional phrase as an adjunct and two participle clauses as adjuncts cannot be determined. All three seem quite clearly function in the same manner (no pun intended).

The first participle is a passive verb, which means that the grammatical subject is the semantic patient of the verb. Passives are a more marked construction. The agent of the clause is marked in the prepositional phrase. Since typically the agent does not need to be expressed in the passive voice, I have taken it to be slightly emphatic, which I have tried to represent in translation (blinded by their own thoughts).

The second adjunct participle is also a periphrastic construction, using the participle form of εἴμι & another participle (ὄντες ἀπηλλοτριωμένοι [lit. being alienated/separated]). This particular clause has its own adjuncts as well in the form of two prepositional phrases: διὰ. . . διὰ. . .

The first of these, διὰ τὴν ἄγνοιαν τὴν οὖσαν ἐν αὐτοῖς, (because of their ignorance that is in them), consists of the head noun ἄγνοιαν (ignorant) followed by a participle clause: τὴν οὖσαν ἐν αὐτοῖς (roughly: that is in them) in the 2nd attributive position. This is a rather unusual construction. For one, the copula is generally not even necessary here. Paul could have simply written: τὴν ἐν αὐτοῖς or even simply: τὴν ἄγνοιαν αὐτῶν to express the same meaning. These different options Paul had are roughly equivalent to “by their ignorance,” “by the ignorance in them,” and “by the ignorance that is in them.” So why would Paul choose the most drawn out construction? It seems likely that Paul is developing his extended metaphor of walking. As I argued previously (cf. Here), this grammatical construction (article noun article participle clause) is regularly and quite nearly universally used to point to a location – the ones who are in this place. If this understanding is correct, then Paul’s purpose and concern for her audience goes beyond merely the manner in which they walk, but also where they walk, figuratively speaking. This would suggest that we should maintain the idea of walking translation, instead of the simply glossing over the metaphor with the literal English “live,” represented by the [T]NIV.

The Gentiles, according to Paul, are foreigners, separated from the life of God (ὄντες ἀπηλλοτριωμένοι τῆς ζωῆς τοῦ θεοῦ). To put it simply, they are in the wrong place, walking on the path of ignorance with clouded minds (ἐσκοτωμένοι τῇ διανοίᾳ). All of this, the imagery and the syntax, it all resonates well with the wisdom tradition we find in Proverbs, particularly 1-9. For example, in Proverbs 8 we find personified wisdom calling out at the crossroads (verse 2) to everyone who is simple and foolish to join and walk with her on the path of righteousness (verse 20).

οἵτινες ἀπηλγηκότες ἑαυτοὺς παρέδωκαν τῇ ἀσελγείᾳ εἰς ἐργασίαν ἀκαθαρσίας πάσης ἐν πλεονεξίᾳ (lit. who, having lost all feeling, have betrayed/handed themselves over to sensuality with all kinds of sexual perversion and greed), is a relative clause that ends this somewhat long sentence. It connects to the αὐτῶν, to provide a more detailed description of the Gentiles and the result of their actions. The semantics of the verb, “παρέδωκαν,” requires the roles of agent, theme, & recipient . That is, for the clause to be grammatical, these three semantic slots must be filled. In this case, the agent is filled by the relative pronoun, “οἵτινες,” referring to the Gentiles. The theme slot is filled by the reflexive pronoun, “ἑαυτοὺς .” The recipient is personified sensuality, “τῇ ἀσελγείᾳ.” The language is figurative, but the meaning is clear. In their callous blindness, they’ve betrayed themselves to sensuality.

Conclusion: Thus, the Gentiles are walking with empty heads and cloudy thinking on the wrong path, the path of ignorance, separated from the life of God. Their hearts are so calloused that they indulge themselves in sensuality - all sorts of impurity and all kinds of greed.

Translation:
[17] So now I must urge you in the Lord not to walk as those gentiles walk with their empty heads, [18] blinded by their own thoughts and alienated from the life of God because of their ignorance and the calloused hearts.  [19] These Gentiles, having lost all feeling, have betrayed themselves to sensuality with all kinds of sexual perversion and greed.

This was a good one today:

“how does the knowing a language means”

My question:

How does this search mean???