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Luke 5:7 - ἐλθόντας as the acc. subject of an infinitive

Posted: February 11th, 2025, 7:52 pm
by zpkenney
καὶ κατένευσαν τοῖς μετόχοις ἐν τῷ ἑτέρῳ πλοίῳ τοῦ ἐλθόντας συλλαβέσθαι αὐτοῖς· καὶ ἦλθον καὶ ἔπλησαν ἀμφότερα τὰ πλοῖα ὥστε βυθίζεσθαι αὐτά.
I'm struggling with the syntactical usage of ἐλθόντας in this passage. it is clear that "τοῦ ... συλλαβέσθαι" is an articular infinitive, most likely, of purpose ("... in order that they come and help them") but the role of ἐλθόντας, syntactically, is uncertain to me.

My Grammatical Analysis of the Greek New Testament has a note about this saying:
acc. as subject of inf.
I would normally think of a subject of an infinitive being some kind of noun or pronoun or something similar in the accusative case as the subject of the infinitive. I think this seems so strange to me because this participle isn't substantival somehow, as far as I can tell. It seems to still be a verbal participle, so I'm struggling with how a verbal participle can function as a subject of an infinitive.

Can anyone else think of a place where a verbal participle is used in the accusative as the subject of an infinitive?

Is there something I'm missing or misunderstanding here?

Any help with this would be much appreciated.

Re: Luke 5:7 - ἐλθόντας as the acc. subject of an infinitive

Posted: February 12th, 2025, 3:17 am
by Jean Putmans
I would read :

του συλλαβεσθαι : Articular Infinitive, final

ελθοντας : Acc.subj. of the Articular Infinitive; referring to μετοχοις,

and after they had come to help ….

I didn‘t find immediately other participles as acc.subj. of an AcI, but Kühner-Gert gave Thucydides 4:84 ακουσαντας βουλευσασθαι, though my Loeb-edition of Thuc. has the nominative ακουσαντες!

Re: Luke 5:7 - ἐλθόντας as the acc. subject of an infinitive

Posted: February 18th, 2025, 7:58 am
by Stephen Carlson
It’s not so much that ἐλθόντας is the subject of the infinitive but that it is a circumstantial participle agreeing with the implied subject of the infinitive.

Re: Luke 5:7 - ἐλθόντας as the acc. subject of an infinitive

Posted: February 23rd, 2025, 5:53 pm
by Jonathan Robie
Stephen Carlson wrote: February 18th, 2025, 7:58 am It’s not so much that ἐλθόντας is the subject of the infinitive but that it is a circumstantial participle agreeing with the implied subject of the infinitive.
I agree. I think it's helpful to include the main verb. Let's look at it without ἐλθόντας first, then add it in:

καὶ κατένευσαν τοῖς μετόχοις
And they signaled to their partners

ἐν τῷ ἑτέρῳ πλοίῳ
in the other boat

τοῦ συλλαβέσθαι αὐτοῖς
to help them
- A genitive articular infinitive construction, which expresses purpose or result. Here, it expresses purpose.

Now let's add ἐλθόντας back:

τοῦ ἐλθόντας συλλαβέσθαι αὐτοῖς
to come and help them
- ἐλθόντας is a circumstantial participle. Aorist implies that coming has to happen before the helping.