Reading Social Conflict through Greek Grammar 113 to give commentators problems. What far too few have recognized is that the present verse is concerned with the possibility of righteous suffering, not suffering in general, and, therefore, it cannot be used as evidence from which to determine the reality of persecution. Second, in many recent treatments of this passage, there has been some confusion between the semantics of the fourth-class condition and its larger contextual function. The treatment found in the monumental work of William J. Dalton serves as a prime example of how the two are often spoken of interchangeably with the result that the former is never actually established. Dalton begins by denying that the form conveys a sense of remote potentiality: “It is not at all necessary to interpret the use of the optative in these verses as indicating that suffering is merely possible [i.e., a statement about the condition’s semantics]”. Instead, he says, “Given the general tone of the whole letter, it is much more likely that the optative seeks to spare the feelings of his readers rather than dismay them with too blunt a reference to the painful trail of persecution [i.e., a statement about the condition’s function]”10. Thus, after he denies one possible meaning of the form, he never suggests another as its replacement. By offering an explanation of the condition’s overall function within the larger Petrine argument, he assumes that its meaning has been resolved as well. Instead, what he has done is simply leave the question of semantics unanswered. A more fruitful approach would begin by first establishing the range of meaning normally conveyed by the form via its use in comparative literature. Then, once the normative boundaries have been set, one should seek out the most appropriate option in the given context. After resolving the question of semantics, then and only then, can its function be explored. A final problem with many of the previous treatments is that commentators have attempted to explain the meaning of the optative by way of the audience’s situation (as constructed from the letter as a whole) 10 W.J. Dalton, Christ’s Proclamation to the Spirits: A Study of 1 Peter 3:18-4:6 (2nd ed.; AnBib 23; Rome 1989) 73. A point that Dalton (and many others who espouse the same view) has failed to consider is that in order to function as a tactful way of preventing further grief for the readers, the condition must necessarily denote an unlikely future contingency, the very meaning that Dalton (and others) deny. To this we might compare the treatment of the optative by Boring. After ruling out a particular semantic meaning (“This grammatical construction does not connote a remote future possibility”), Boring discusses the reality of the readers’ suffering and then proposes a specific function of the condition, “It is this real but sporadic nature of the persecution that is indicated by the optative mood” (1 Peter, 131). But, similar to Dalton, what Boring has overlooked is that in order to represent the sporadic nature or the unpredictability of persecution, the condition must convey some sense of uncertainty.