Perhaps I’m missing the obvious, but could someone tell me what the female genitive participle πεπυρωμένης is going with? There doesn’t seem to be a sensible female noun in sight of it.
I checked the bible and have read the verses you mentioned. There must be an error in your bible, because in my bible it is written “ως εν καμινω πεπυρωμενοι”, masculine gender, and it refers to the feet (ποδες).
If the text is correct as given there is correct, what does πεπυρωμένης refer to? If the text is corrupt can anyone point me to a better one online (preferrably with the handy links from words to a parser and lexicon that Perseus has).
http://www.bibles.org.uk/pdf/bibles/ - I like the work of Robinson and Pierpoint - This one in PDF has Morphological info, but not a thing like Perseus.
Try E-sword, www.e-sword.net there is a version of Scrivener’s and Westcott hort and perhaps a few others you could use for comparison.
Does it help to know that ‘furnace’ is feminine? [size=150]ἡ κάμινος[/size]
One commentary on this says “[size=150]πεπυρωμένης[/size] fem. and gen.,
defies explanation as it stands, amendments are suggested but these have poor MS support”
An Analysis of the Greek New Testament, Zerwick & Gosvenor
Well I think πεπυρωμένης can be justified if we imply χαλκολιβάνου, i.e. the genitive of ἡ χαλκολίβανος “burnished brass”. (Let’s thank Koala who pointed to ἡ κάμινος). It seems possible because this word was just used in the dative and the participle applies obviously to such a material.
In my opinion it could be a genitive of material (Smyth 1323) : “His feet were like burnished brass, [as made] of [a one] like tested by fire in a furnace”, hence Rainbow Missions’ translation on Perseus : “as if it had been refined in a furnace”, and the French translation from the “Bible de Jérusalem”: “ses pieds pareils à de l’airain précieux que l’on aurait purifié au creuset”.
χαλκολιβάνου πεπυρωμένης could be also interpreted as a genitive absolute, but it seems less convincing to me.
Technically speaking, πεπυρωμένης is a lectio difficilior than πεπυρωμένοι from a syntactical viewpoint.
Here the author shows something like the contrary to Daniel’s clay feet colossus : Dn, 2, 31 "You, O king, saw, and, behold, a great image. This image, which was mighty, and whose brightness was excellent, stood before you; and the aspect of it was awesome. [32] As for this image, its head was of fine gold, its breast and its arms of silver, its belly and its thighs of brass, [33] its legs of iron, its feet part of iron, and part of clay. "
Then it seems important that the “testing by fire” should apply to the material, not to the feet themselves. because it would somewhat disrupt the scene’s dramatic intensity : imagine “the one like a son of man” with his feet in a furnace ! Or the feet in a furnace while the “son of man” is waiting outside for the end of the testing !
It becomes more clear that “πεπυρωμενοι” refers to the feet and only to them, if we read further the revealation. Later on it’s said something like the color of the feet are like copper as if burned in a furnace.
Didn’t anyone ever tell you just to read Revelations and NOT try and grammatically analyze it?? John breaks al sorts of grammatical rules in Revelation. It really is a simple read, but once you really scratch the surface and look deeper, there’s a lot of weird stuff going on (aside from the weird apocalyptic genre stuff). I had a Greek prof that thought that what John was doing here was translating on the fly when he wrote the book, that this was possibly Hebrew that he was hearing in his vision, and that he was trying to hammer it out as quick as he could in Greek. Revelation is certainly filled with Hebraic symbology and there are definitely Hebraic influences in the grammar. I try not to get too hung up on the grammar, and simply enjoy the read. The vocab is really pretty easy, and if you don’t stop and start analyzing things it really is a quick and easy read.
I’m still at the stage in my Greek where I’m semi-translating as I go along rather than just reading plain Greek, so I do pay attention to what is supposed to be going with what.
