Participle as Finite Verb

clayton stirling bartholomew c.s.bartholomew at worldnet.att.net
Sat Jul 11 08:24:32 EDT 1998


James Hardy Ropes and Bruce Manning Metzger agree that Codex Beza's omission
of APELUSAN in Acts 13:3 ruins the syntax of the verse. Now when Ropes and
Metzger agree who would dare to question? 

I am wondering if the Acts 13:3 in Codex Beza is really impossible to read.

TOTE NHSTEUSANTES KAI PROSEUXAMENOI PANTES
KAI EPIQENTES TAS CEIRAS AUTOIS 

If we were left with only this text of Acts 13:3, I suspect we could find a
way to make sense out of it. 
If we read the first two participles as circumstantial and the second KAI as
an adverb then EPIQENTES might function as a finite verb. This is reaching a
little. The second KAI is a problem. The received text (NA27) is much easier
to scan. Perhaps Luke's exemplary style makes us intolerant of irregularities
that we might accept if they appeared in 2nd Peter or Jude. 

I have been working through some passages in Agamemnon where one is forced to
mount siege works against the text to coerce some meaning out of it. For
example lines 105-107 where J.D.  Denniston comments "the following jumble of
words . . . defies interpretation."  By comparison to this Acts 13:3 in Codex
Bezae doesn't really look all that impossible. 

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

"I reckon you think you been redeemed." Hazel Motes

 "Wise Blood", Flannery O'Connor



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