EIS + accusative (was, alas, "Eternal Life")

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Thu Jul 30 17:08:33 EDT 1998


At 7:17 AM -0500 7/30/98, John M. Sweigart wrote:
>Fellow List-Members;
>I have recently been doing a NT study of ZWH AIWNION=ETERNAL LIFE.  In
>doing so I find a significant block of usage of the  phrase as an object
>of the preposition EIS.  As so often happens, the translations are not
>uniform.  Any suggestions? The only thing that comes to mind so far is a
>RESULT nuance i.e. resulting in eternal life.
>--

I'm glad that Carlton has already responded to this--I was about to say,
"Here we start a new round of "accusative of result."

Let me once again suggest a sort of rule of thumb which I think will work
pretty well when one confronts EIS + accusative:

  (a) if the word in the accusative can indicate either a point in space or
time, then "into" or "onto" will usually convey the sense of this very
standard accusative of "limit";

  (b) if the word in the accusative is NOT a point in space or time but is
a METAPHORICAL "limit," then "to" or "for" will usually work; if the phrase
or verse came from the LXX one can often surmise an original Hebrew
preposition L';

  (c) Like all rules, the above will admit of exceptions; nevertheless, I'd
guess that 99.44 % (perhaps a little fewer?) of instances of EIS +
accusative will fit into the above two categories.

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University
Summer: 1647 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/



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