1 Cor. 11:14-15

Suedaleg at aol.com Suedaleg at aol.com
Sat Jul 21 12:06:26 EDT 2001


Wayne, et al:

Wayne asks:Do any of you on this list find any syntactic or contextual clues 
that wouldcause you to lean strongly toward analyzing these verses as either a
question (even if rhetorical) or a declarative?

respense:
Yes, other than some subtle clues it is difficult ,as it is in spoken English 
also, to distinguish whether a statement might be a question.  The NKJV 
translates these two verses as thought it were a retorical question, or at 
least one for which the answer should be obvious.  I think the clues here 
must come from the context. v 13 also contains a question, indicated by EN 
hUMIN AUTOIS KRINATE (judge this among youselves.)  V. 14 (in the Majority 
text at least) begins with a conjunction H indicating that these two verses 
(13 and 14) are of similar, if not the same, type of declaration.  
For this reason my take on this is "Is it proper that ...? Also, does not 
nature show ...?"  (my paraphrase)  The questions are in my opinion 
retorical, intended to bring the reader (or hearer) to the author's 
conclusion, in this case that women (and men also for that matter) should 
show a particular attitude in public prayer.
I hope this can help you to understand this type of discourse.

Dale Greenlee



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