85 EPHESIANS 4,12. A REVISED READING of an action. The relational sense of the preposition has different nuances 19 ; it can specify a purpose, a friendly or hostile relationship, a reference, agreement 20, or company. Many scholars have recently argued that the usage of prov overlaps ¥ that of eıv in Eph 4,12. They think that the change in prepositions does ß not modify the final sense of the whole structure 21. A.T. Lincoln provides this interpretation claiming that a characteristic feature of writer’s style is to string together several prepositional phrases, “all dependent on the main verb and coordinate with each other” 22, for example: 1,3.5.6.20.21; 2,7 ; 4,13-14; 6,12. His observation is correct, but his interpretation may not be. This particular feature of Ephesians is a figure of speech desig- nated by rhetoricians as accumulation, and it can express either a coor- dinate or subordinate relationship depending on the train of thought of the sequence 23. While it is true that prov and eıv appear as interchangeable preposi- ¥ ß tions in NT Greek, and that prov is used with final sense in many places ¥ of the Pauline corpus, one must still ask: Is this the sense which emerges from the structure of Eph 4,12? In the letters of Paul the structure composed by prov + accusative ¥ usually indicates the place toward which the main verbal action is directed. The same structure sometimes expresses a purpose. See for ex- ample Rom 3,26 24 : “through the forbearance of God — to prove (prov ¥ thn endeijin) his righteousness” (NAB). Other examples show that the ù¶ distinction between prov and eıv becomes more blurred in the NT. See ¥ ß Philemon 5 25 : “hearing of your love and faith which you have toward (prov ton) the Lord Jesus and toward (eıv) all the saints” (NKJ). ¥¥ ß Denoting (a) the goal aimed at or striven toward, (b) a hostile or 19 friendly relation, (c) a connection, (d) adverbial expressions, and (e) company. See BAGD 874-875. The relationship of agreement expressed with prov + accusative is ¥ 20 more common in classical Greek than in Koine. Grammarians also designate this relation as conformity, accordance, correspondence or conformance. See O’NEILL, “The Work of Ministry”, 336-40; PAGE, “Whose Minis- 21 try ”, 28-30. LINCOLN, Ephesians, 253. 22 Accumulation “consists in the addition of semantically supplementary 23 words. [...] It may be divided into coordinating (§§ 666-675) and sub- ordinating (§ 676) accumulation”. H. LAUSBERG, Handbook of Literary Rhet- oric. A Foundation for Literary Study (Leiden 1998) § 665. Notice here the sense of the sequence: prov + accusative indicating ¥ 24 purpose and eıv + infinitive indicating result. ß See also Mark 11,1. 25