Comments on Hebrews 6:4-6 #3--Not a Conditional Warning?

This is the third installment in my series of entries on Hebrews 6:4-6 (see the first and second). For this third entry my objective is much more modest than in the earlier two. Here I will briefly assess Randall Gleason's brief comments on the passage in his essay, "The Old Testament Background of the Warning in Hebrews 6:4-8," Bibliotheca Sacra 155 (1998): 71. Gleason reasons,

[T]he King James Version translation, “If they shall fall away” (v. 6), is unlikely because it is doubtful that the aorist participle παραπεσόντας, because of its linkage by a single article (τοὺς) to the preceding participles (vv. 4–5), was intended to express a condition. Neither does verse 6 have the conditional particle ἄν, which was usually used to introduce a conditional statement in Greek.

Gleason defers to the very brief article by Sproule (discussed here) and passes on his conclusions as though they were rather definitive. In particular, without any critical evaluation or reasoning on his own part, Gleason assumes that the fifth participle (παραπεσόντας), has to be adjectival and cannot be adverbial "because of its linkage by a single article (τοὺς) to the preceding participles (vv. 4-5) . . . ." It is precarious to depend upon the interpretive or exegetical work of another, particularly when the passage under question prompts numerous questions about that exegesis. See my comments on Sproule's exegesis. With all due respect to my one-time seminary professor, I disagree with Sproule's configuring of Hebrews 6:4-6.

More glaring, if possible, than unquestioning dependence upon Sproule's altogether too brief essay, is Gleason's next comment when he states, "Neither does verse 6 have the conditional particle ἄν, which was usually used to introduce a conditional statement in Greek." This is a rather remarkable statement. Yet, more remarkable than Gleason's writing it is that it got past the editors of Bibliotheca Sacra. Why is this remarkable? Given the fact that we are not dealing with a finite verb in the subjunctive mood in Hebrews 6:6 but we are dealing with a participle (παραπεσόντα), of course we would not expect "the conditional particle ἄν" to be present in the verse "to introduce a conditional statement in Greek" that entails a participle rather than a finite verb in the subjunctive mood. We might have expected some form of the conditional particle ἄν to have been present, if the word under question were a subjunctive. Then, however, there would be little dispute or doubt whether the verse entailed a supposition.

Harsh as it may seem, yet with all due respect to Randall Gleason, a man whom I know, his comments on Hebrews 6:4-6, brief as they are, are unworthy of anything more than this brief exposure of its flaws.