Parainesis on ἁγιασ�ός (1 Th 4: 3-8) 147 to modern Greek, the vocabulary and its syntax are in a state of flux. Nothing militates against a sensitive understanding of the NT as trying to put it in a strait jacket, applying a rigidity that is inspired by what is thought to be classical norms. But there is more to it. The infinitive κτᾶσθαι is here used closely together with the present infinitive εἰδέναι.88 This infinitive colors the meaning of κτᾶσθαι. The verb οἶδα cum infinitive signifies “to know (how) to …”, “to learn (how) to …” The construction signifies a process of learning, where learning implies repeated attempts or a duration. Thus in Phil 4:12 Paul says οἶδα καὶ ταπεινοῦσθαι, οἶδα καὶ περισσεύειν, whereby he means that he has learned how to live in want and how to live in plenty-something that has happened repeatedly, during which time he has learned it. The infinitive εἰδέναι occurs once cum infinitive: Col 4:6: εἰδέναι ... ἀποκρίνεσθαι “to know / to learn how to answer”. This is precisely the sense in 1 Th 4:4. The Thessalonians are to learn how to κτᾶσθαι their σκεῦος in holiness and honor. The understandings of “wife” for σκεῦος and of “to acquire”, “to get”, in the sense of “to marry” for κτᾶσθαι are here impossible. Κτᾶσθαι not only in its own right, but also by virtue of the modification of εἰδέναι, has here the durative sense of “to have in possession”, “to have under control”, “to keep”. This im- plies that the interpretation of σκεῦος as “body” is unexceptionable. The meaning then is: “that each one of you learn / know how to keep (under control) his body in sanctification and honor”. 5. Vs. 5. is fairly straightforward without any words that are really difficult to fit in the context. Having given them in vv. 3-4 a positive admonition to practise holiness in their everyday life, he now parenthe- tically puts the matter negatively, that is, what they are not to do, by referring to the way of gentile life. Here we need not exaggerate the vices of the heathen, as is common with interpreters. For that matter their quality of life was, from the Christian point of view, not much different from the quality of life in our Western World.89 Nor does there seem to be any reason to suppose that Church morals were worse than they are The construction does not occur anywhere else according to the Thesaurus Linguae 88 Graecae except in Patristic quotations of 1 Thess 4:4. The two words occur once in Aristo- tle’s commentator Eustratius; the words, however, occur in the reverse order and in separate constructions (clauses). For example, it is to be seriously doubted whether homosexuality and other perver- 89 sions were more rife in Greece and Rome that they are in the Western World. As for incest, which in modern societies has become a daily occurrence, it “did not occur among the gentiles” (1 Cor 5:1), which explains why there is no proper word for it in Greek (αἱμομιξία is a late (apparently Christian) formation).