Romans 7: 1's translation?

[jbaur]

Romans 7: 1
Or do you not know, brethren (for I speak to those who know the law), that the law has dominion over a man as long as he lives?

In Haydock it starts like this: CHAPTER VII.

Ver. 1. As long as it liveth; or, as long as he liveth. Ch. — This seems the literal construction, rather than as long as he, the man, liveth. For S. Paul here compares the law (which in the Greek is in the masculine gender) to a husband, whom a wife cannot quit, nor be married to another, as long as the husband liveth

Could someone explain the Greek for “it Liveth” in stead of HE!

Thanks

 

[BartholomewB]

The verb is ζῇ (zé), the 3rd person sing., meaning “(he, she, or it) lives.” Greek doesn’t have differentiated verb forms for masc., fem., and neuter. Maybe @Gorgias can help if he sees this.

 

[Wesrock]

I am not a Greek scholar, however, Haydock seems to be saying that the “it” in this case is the law.

For S. Paul here compares the law (which in the Greek is in the masculine gender) to a husband, whom a wife cannot quit, nor be married to another, as long as the husband liveth

So Saint Paul is saying that the man is bound to the law as a wife is bound to her husband. A wife is bound to her husband as long as the husband lives, and so the man is bound to the law as long as the law lives.

Romans 7: 1
Or do you not know, brethren (for I speak to those who know the law), that the law has dominion over a man as long as [it/the law] lives?

 

[Gorgias]

Could someone explain the Greek for “it Liveth” in stead of HE!

The conclusion is an interpretative one, and not a grammatical one. In English, we would generally use a pronoun, and it would be very clear whether we meant “as long as it [the law] lives” or “as long as he [the man] lives.”

In Greek, it’s not going to be as clear, for two reasons:

• The inflected verb tells you the gender and number of the subject. So, we know that the subject is masculine singular. Often, that’s sufficient. In this case, however…
• both ‘man’ and ‘law’ are masculine nouns. So, both could fill the bill, here. (Even if you wanted to use a pronoun or an article, both of these would take the same one.)

So, if Paul had written it all out, he would have written “for as long as the man lives”, which is ἐφ’ ὅσον χρόνον ὁ ἀνθρώπος ζῇ

On the other hand, if he had meant “for as long as the law lives”, he would have written ἐφ’ ὅσον χρόνον ὁ νόμος ζῇ.

But, since he didn’t write it all out, what we’re left with is either:

• “for as long as [he (i.e., ‘the man’)] lives”, which is ἐφ’ ὅσον χρόνον ζῇ
  or
• “for as long as [it (i.e., ‘the law’)] lives”, which is ἐφ’ ὅσον χρόνον ζῇ

See the problem? It’s written the same, either way.

So, “it lives” (as opposed to “he lives”) isn’t a distinction in grammatical inflection, but rather, a distinction in interpretation.

(BTW… I’ve read some commentaries that say “oh, Paul means ‘the law’” and others that say “oh, Paul means ‘the man’”, so… )

 

[jbaur]

Wow!

Thanks to all.

Gorgias, I suspected your explanation for the start. Well, the start was a long time ago. I first noticed it when studying Origen’s commentary on Romans, that is, the English translation.

I like Origen’s explanation.

Now I have a clear explanation.

Many, many thanks!

 

[Gorgias]

The inflected verb tells you the gender and number of the subject. So, we know that the subject is masculine singular.

Whoops! I definitely misspoke, there! The verb tells us number – so we know that it’s “he” or “she” or “it” – but that’s all. We would learn more in English by the choice of pronoun, but even that wouldn’t help us in Greek.

So, we’re still stuck, but not because the verb is telling us what the gender of the subject is.

 

[Hodos]

There is no pronoun in the Greek, so since the verb is in the Third Person Singular tense, you would look back to the subject who was being addressed earlier in the sentence. In this case, it is referring back to the man. Not really sure why the translation you are looking at would use it, it doesn’t really make sense to me. This is pretty common in Greek and can get interesting because they tended to use what we would consider run-on sentences a lot. Mark does this quite a bit. Also, verbs are not inflected according to gender, but inflect according to the person performing the action (1st, 2nd, 3rd person), and number (singular or plural). Additionally, the rest of the dialogue makes it clear that the woman is bound to her husband’s rule as long as the husband is alive.