Rev.2:1 κρατῶ with two elements following?

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Stephen Hughes
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Joined: February 26th, 2013, 7:12 am

Rev.2:1 κρατῶ with two elements following?

Post by Stephen Hughes »

Revelations 2:1 wrote:Τῷ ἀγγέλῳ τῆς ἐν Ἐφέσῳ ἐκκλησίας γράψον,
Τάδε λέγει ὁ κρατῶν τοὺς ἑπτὰ ἀστέρας ἐν τῇ δεξιᾷ αὐτοῦ, ὁ περιπατῶν ἐν μέσῳ τῶν ἑπτὰ λυχνιῶν τῶν χρυσῶν·
Are there any examples outside the NT from about our time or earlier where κρατῶ is used with two accusatives, or with an accusative plus another atributive element, as might be the case here?

The change in meaning, by taking this as attributive rather than instrumental, would be that the seven stars would always be in the right hand, and he never let them out of his right hand, they remain in the place of strength, etc.

No other NT usages have an accusative of the thing, followed by another attributive element. In Modern Greek κρατῶ can comfortably have this sort of usage.
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
S Walch
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Re: Rev.2:1 κρατῶ with two elements following?

Post by S Walch »

Would Judg 7:20 LXX be something you're looking for?

καὶ ἐσάλπισαν αἱ τρεῖς ἀρχαὶ ἐν ταῖς κερατίναις, καὶ συνέτριψαν τὰς ὑδρείας, καὶ ἐκράτησαν ἐν χερσὶν ἀριστεραῖς αὐτῶν τὰς λαμπάδας καὶ ἐν χερσὶν δεξιαῖς αὐτῶν τὰς κερατίνας τοῦ σαλπίζειν, καὶ ἀνέκραξαν Ῥομφαία τῷ κυρίῳ καὶ τῷ Γεδεών.
Stephen Hughes
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Re: Rev.2:1 κρατῶ with two elements following?

Post by Stephen Hughes »

S Walch wrote:Would Judg 7:20 LXX be something you're looking for?
Perhaps. Neither of these are clear examples. "They held them so they would remain in their left / right hand", seems forced. An example like, "He held (kept) the dog's mouth shut (with his hand)", possibly something like εκρατησε το του κυναριου στομα κλειστον* might demonstrate it. In the verse from Revelations, there is talk of apostasy and backsliding, a impulse to not remain in the right hand, in that way κρατειν functions something might function as a de facto causative of διαμενειν (or something like that). That's another way of asking my question.
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
Barry Hofstetter
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Re: Rev.2:1 κρατῶ with two elements following?

Post by Barry Hofstetter »

Stephen Hughes wrote:
Revelations 2:1 wrote:Τῷ ἀγγέλῳ τῆς ἐν Ἐφέσῳ ἐκκλησίας γράψον,
Τάδε λέγει ὁ κρατῶν τοὺς ἑπτὰ ἀστέρας ἐν τῇ δεξιᾷ αὐτοῦ, ὁ περιπατῶν ἐν μέσῳ τῶν ἑπτὰ λυχνιῶν τῶν χρυσῶν·
Are there any examples outside the NT from about our time or earlier where κρατῶ is used with two accusatives, or with an accusative plus another atributive element, as might be the case here?

The change in meaning, by taking this as attributive rather than instrumental, would be that the seven stars would always be in the right hand, and he never let them out of his right hand, they remain in the place of strength, etc.

No other NT usages have an accusative of the thing, followed by another attributive element. In Modern Greek κρατῶ can comfortably have this sort of usage.
Stephen, I think you are making this way too complicated. What we have is a direct object of the participle in the accusative case. Then we have a preposition phrase which shows the location of the 7 stars. He's holding the 7 starts in his hand. And how would this be attributive? The only way to make it attributive would be to repeat τούς before ἐν. As it is, it's better to take it as adverbial with κρατῶν.
N.E. Barry Hofstetter, M.A., Th.M.
Ph.D. Student U of FL
Instructor of Latin
Jack M. Barrack Hebrew Academy
καὶ σὺ τὸ σὸν ποιήσεις κἀγὼ τὸ ἐμόν. ἆρον τὸ σὸν καὶ ὕπαγε.
Stephen Hughes
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Re: Rev.2:1 κρατῶ with two elements following?

Post by Stephen Hughes »

Perhaps I've used the wrong word. What is the name of the second element in, "He painted the wall¹ blue²." I assume it is an attribute. (FWIW, actually that's a dative in Greek - ἤλειψε τὸν τοῖχον κυανῷ.)

I know that in the part of the sentence, which is in the nominative we we would write the article to indicate that the attribute is part of the subject about which the sentence is making a statement - something that we are expected to know or take for granted, as in Ὁ ἀνὴρ ὁ παχὺς ἀπὸ πρωΐας μέχρι μεσονυκτίου ἐσθίει χοιρινὰ πλευρὰ. "The fat man ate sides of pork day and night.", whereas we don't use the definite article when the attribute is the part we want to bring attention to or to introduce, Ὁ καθ' ἡμέραν νηστεύων λεπτός ἐστιν. "Someone going without food every day is skinny."

When a verb is used with two elements in the accusative - one of them being a known element, and the other being something about the first that we want to and one is some new or restated thing it is, attribute it has or circumstance it finds itself in, do they need to be called different things. Aren't they all attributes? It is all the information that is being emphasised or introduced.
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
Stephen Hughes
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Re: Rev.2:1 κρατῶ with two elements following?

Post by Stephen Hughes »

For the record, let me say that I don't expect to find Koine period examples of κρατεῖν used as I've described it might be used. I think that the earliest date of finding its use with two elements might be a marker of a change in the language.
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
Robert Emil Berge
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Re: Rev.2:1 κρατῶ with two elements following?

Post by Robert Emil Berge »

Stephen Hughes wrote:Perhaps I've used the wrong word. What is the name of the second element in, "He painted the wall¹ blue²." I assume it is an attribute. (FWIW, actually that's a dative in Greek - ἤλειψε τὸν τοῖχον κυανῷ.)
What you have here is not an attribute but a predicative of the object, I think it is called. In the Greek here you have something else, which is an instrumental dative, maybe better translated "with blue colour". It seems what you are after is a predicative use of κρατέω meaning something like "to rule/force something to be some way/something". LSJ does not give any examples of this use of the verb, and your example is not such a case either, as Barry has explained. But it is a special use of the verb, meaning "hold in the hand", for which this sentence is used as the example in LSJ.
Stephen Hughes
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Re: Rev.2:1 κρατῶ with two elements following?

Post by Stephen Hughes »

Thanks for your comments. Although it seems a little futile and time consuming, knowing what one cannot say in a language is part of how we naturally learn languages. This thread is just such an attempt at that sort of futility.

Neither κρατῶ nor ἀλείφω take double accusatives in the Koine period. The first one κρατῶ is used in Modern Greek in the sense of "keep" (sth in some position or state). "Keep" seems like such a general all-purpose word in English, but it is actually one of the most difficult words to translate into Koine Greek. It needs to be expressed differently in different circumstances. To convey that meaning of "keep", we need to look at the bigger picture of what is happening - we need to see that the door, for example, is open and not shut that there might be forces, which would tend to close it. To compose in the style of the extant literature, κρατῶ needs to stay in small focus, so there is need for a larger syntactic construction to give a larger focus of attention.

Luke does that with a τοῦ μὴ + inf. at 24 and 16 Οἱ δὲ ὀφθαλμοὶ αὐτῶν ἐκρατοῦντο τοῦ μὴ ἐπιγνῶναι αὐτόν. - a metaphorical use of an image of somebody putting their hands over somebody else's eyes ("Guess who I am."). Reading that by translating as "keep" - "keeping their eyes (closed)" - would be a little misleading because Greek doesn't have a simple word for our "keep". There is a similar example with ἵνα μὴ + subj. in Revelations 7:1. Such a circuitous expression of meaning could be avoided if there was a handy word for "keep" in Greek that had two accusatives following, but it doesn't. One of reasons is that κρατῶ is small picture, a personal and direct action at this period and another is that English was not their native language, so they didn't feel the need to have a word that functions like "keep".

The prepositional phrase ἐν τῇ δεξιᾷ αὐτοῦ in ὁ κρατῶν τοὺς ἑπτὰ ἀστέρας ἐν τῇ δεξιᾷ αὐτοῦ in Revelations 2:1 - the verse of honour in this thread is most probably ad-verbphrasal rather than simply adverbal. There are two reasons for my thinking that. The first is that are that the word order is changed to (presumably) force an adverbial rather than ad-verbphrasal use for (ἐν) δόλῳ in καὶ συνεβουλεύσαντο ἵνα τὸν Ἰησοῦν δόλῳ κρατήσωσιν καὶ ἀποκτείνωσιν. at Matthew 26:4, and its synoptic parallel αὐτὸν ἐν δόλῳ κρατήσαντες ἀποκτείνωσιν at Mark 14:1. The second is that the +acc. (gen. in Luke) is non-optional for this verb. In cases where the accompanying acc is non-optional the verb phrase is modified rather than just the verb.

Even though the Modern Greek usage is with two accusatives, this thread is titled "two elements", not "two accusatives" because there are a number of constructions possible with the accusative and genitive. Another interesting point is that in some cases, κρατῶ is used somewhat as a synonym of ἅπτομαι - but that is at the other side of the spectrum of its meanings, far from the meaning "keep" that I am mainly going on about here.

ἀλείφω is used regularly +acc. (strong) of what (or who) is smeared onto +dat. (weak) of what what (or who) is smeared onto is smeared with. The phrase about painting expressed with the accusative and dative is unremarkable.
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
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