2Cor 5:1 (SBLG) Οἴδαμεν γὰρ ὅτι ἐὰν ἡ ἐπίγειος ἡμῶν οἰκία τοῦ σκήνους καταλυθῇ, οἰκοδομὴν ἐκ θεοῦ ἔχομεν οἰκίαν ἀχειροποίητον αἰώνιον ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς.
The language here demonstrates a feature of Paul’s style. Anyone want to explain what is going on with the substantives (nouns) and their dependents in this verse?
I’ll shoot, in the hopes that you’ll explain the question a bit more. I’m not sure that I understand what you’re getting at exactly.
2Cor 5:1 (SBLG) Οἴδαμεν γὰρ ὅτι ἐὰν ἡ ἐπίγειος ἡμῶν οἰκία τοῦ σκήνους καταλυθῇ, οἰκοδομὴν ἐκ θεοῦ ἔχομεν οἰκίαν ἀχειροποίητον αἰώνιον ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς.
ἡ ἐπίγειος ἡμῶν οἰκία τοῦ σκήνους
Our earthly house of the body
(οἰκοδομὴν) ἐκ θεοῦ
(built) by God
Why isn’t οἰκοδομήν passive?
οἰκίαν ἀχειροποίητον αἰώνιον
a forever house not built by hand
ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς
In the heavens
To answer my own question, this isn’t Homeric Greek, and οἰκοδομήν is a substantive. We have a building authored by God, that is a house…
Foolish of me no doubt, but OK I’ll play. I note:
the quasi-chiastic organization of ἡ επιγειος ημων οικια and οικιαν … εν τοις ουρανοις (A1 B … B A2), rhetorically enhancing the opposition between earthly and in-the-heavens and intensifying the point that they are both οικιαι but in different locations. (The low-level syntactic variation between επιγειος rather than επι τη γη and εν τοις ουρανοις is minor.)
the complementary way this primary contrast is fleshed out: ἡ επιγειος ημων οικια του σκηνους vs. οἰκίαν ἀχειροποίητον αἰώνιον ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς, expanding on the difference between the two οικιαι. Our terrestrial house is metaphorically said to be a tent, i.e. temporary and ungrand (cf. Jn.1.14 ἐσκήνωσεν), while the use of σκῆνος rather than σκηνή activates the old dualistic image of the body as the earthly and ephemeral habitat of the soul. By contrast the house we have in the heavens is said to be not made by hand (unlike a tent or any human dwelling) and is everlasting (ditto). In both cases the mutually opposed dependents are placed after οικια(ν), so these items are in parallel, chiasmus being reserved for the larger framing structure. The celestial οικια is made grander than the earthly one by virtue of its being longer and its having two imposing epithets as distinct from the simple defining genitive. The word order of οικιαν ἀχειροποίητον αἰώνιον signifies that the not-hand-made house is a for-ever one, i.e. the latter adjective, in the absence of an intervening και, applies not just to οικιαν but to οικιαν αχειροποητον.
οἰκοδομην ἐκ θεου εχομεν at the head of the main clause, creating a preliminary and salient contrast with ἡ ἐπίγειος ἡμῶν οἰκία τοῦ σκήνους and setting up the appositional οἰκίαν ἀχειροποίητον αἰώνιον ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς, which elaborates it. The fronting of οικοδομην, with its implication of an immovable built structure, magnifies the contrast with the idea of a tent, and the adverbial εκ θεου explicitly gets God into the picture by identifying him as the building’s source. Jointly they anticipate the substance of the apposed phrase.
How’d I do (making due allowance for difference in linguistic framework and terminology)? It all seems pretty obvious. I don’t know which of the various features you had in mind: the appositive οικιαν or something else? As with any sentence, there’s quite a lot “going on,” and I’ve confined myself to the substantives and their dependents as stipulated.
Joel, MWH, Thanks for the responses. I didn’t really notice the chiasm since my attention was attracted to the genitives dropped on either side of the noun and other minor complexities. It isn’t really hard to read but it might present some interesting challenges for a seminary student to diagram. While both A. T. Roberson (pp.399,418) and Nigel Turner (p 218) talk about this neither are particularly enlightening. Zerwick (§47, p 18) is somewhat more helpful. He points out that Paul has a tendency to pile up genitives, when they fall on either side of the noun they will be read differently than when the are on the same side of the noun. The first pattern might appear similar to a Hebrew construct chain but it isn’t necessarily a semitism. The question stated simply: What is dependent on what? If you were to produce a syntax tree in the generative tradition or just diagram the sentence how would you resolve a chain of genitives or genitives distributed on both sides of the noun. Some scholars[1] have suggested that one of the genitives might be used to indicate apposition to the head noun. I have no opinion about that.
Zerwick offers two other passages from 2Cor:
2Cor 4:4
SBLG)ἐν οἷς ὁ θεὸς τοῦ αἰῶνος τούτου ἐτύφλωσεν τὰ νοήματα τῶν ἀπίστων εἰς τὸ μὴ αὐγάσαι τὸν φωτισμὸν τοῦ εὐαγγελίου τῆς δόξης τοῦ Χριστοῦ, ὅς ἐστιν εἰκὼν τοῦ θεοῦ.
2Cor 3:18
(SBLG)ἡμεῖς δὲ πάντες ἀνακεκαλυμμένῳ προσώπῳ τὴν δόξαν κυρίου κατοπτριζόμενοι τὴν αὐτὴν εἰκόνα μεταμορφούμεθα ἀπὸ δόξης εἰς δόξαν, καθάπερ ἀπὸ κυρίου πνεύματος.
I found a worthwhile theological discussion of this passage:
Jeremiah Mutie, Death in Second-Century Christian Thought: The Meaning of Death in Earliest Christianity, 2015. Where Mutie interacts with M. J. Harris and M. Thrall.
I found it with a Google:
Using one of the following patterns
harris “οἰκία τοῦ σκήνους”
“οἰκία τοῦ σκήνους” “house/building from God”
[1] George Guthrie, 2Cor BECNT 2015, p. 277. Guthrie suggests that τοῦ σκήνους is an appositional genitive in relationship to οἰκία.
2Cor 5:1 (SBLG) Οἴδαμεν γὰρ ὅτι ἐὰν ἡ ἐπίγειος ἡμῶν οἰκία τοῦ σκήνους καταλυθῇ, οἰκοδομὴν ἐκ θεοῦ ἔχομεν οἰκίαν ἀχειροποίητον αἰώνιον ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς.
Right I didn’t comment on the two genitives. I thought there were more notable syntactic phenomena in the sentence. But it’s a worthwhile question. I think it may be a mistake to try to pin these things down too precisely, and I think it would be wrong to generalize about double or multiple genitives (however distributed) without reference to their semantic function.
Βut for what it’s worth I’d say that if του σκηνους were not present the ημων would follow οικια rather than preceding it. That’s to say, it’s displaced from its normal position by του σκηνους appended to οικια. I called του σκηνους a defining genitive (i.e. the οικια consists of the σκηνος), and of course I’d call ημων a possessive one (cf. εχομεν in the main clause). That is to specify their pragmatic function; as far as the Greek itself goes they’re both just adnominal. So why is ημων where it is? If it were placed after του σκηνους, it would risk being taken as qualifying that alone (“the house of[i.e. consisting in] our tent”), not οικια του σκηνους as a composite constituent. Putting it ahead of οικια blocks that (mis)interpretation. του σκηνους, for its part, is where it practically has to be (where defining genitives regularly are); and to have ημων intervening would interfere with the coherence of οικια του σκηνους and leave του σκηνους dangling. Brought forward to where it is ημων attaches most closely to επιγειος and gives that qualifying epithet rather more weight than it would otherwise have, aiding the upcoming opposition to the οικια εν τοις ουρανοις.
So in terms of dependency: του σκηνους depends on η οικια, and ημων depends on η επιγειος οικια του σκηνους. But this lacks syntactical verification, and no rule can well be derived from it.
Incidentally, surely εκ θεου is independent of οικοδομην. It depends on εχομεν.