Mat 12:6 MEIZON

clayton stirling bartholomew c.s.bartholomew at worldnet.att.net
Sat Aug 15 14:56:27 EDT 1998


I've lost the original thread here but I found an illustration that may be
useful. 

The original question was how can a neuter adjective have a referent which is
masculine. I argued that it need not agree in gender with it's ultimate
referent. This morning I stumbled across an example of this in a different
place, Acts 13:39 where APO PANTWN hWN . . . appears to have hAMARTIWN as a
referent. 

One thing to keep in mind is that in both cases (Mat 12:6 and Acts 13:39) the
adjective is functioning as a substantive and is somewhat syntactically
independent of the (ultimate) referent.  In both cases the adjective is used
to depict an abstraction "something greater ", "from all things" . The
semantic relationship between the abstraction and the ultimate referent is
indirect, so that the lack of concord in gender does not really cause a lot of
dissonance. 

The statements above include a lot of speculation on my part. I assume that
speculation is allowed on this list. 

-- 
Clayton Stirling Bartholomew
Three Tree Point
P.O. Box 255 Seahurst WA 98062


"Peter Singer must Go."

Ancient Chinese Proverb 
************************

Visit the Professor Death Web Page

http://www.worldmag.com/world/issue/08-08-98/cultural_2.asp



More information about the B-Greek mailing list