PRWTH in Luke 2:2

James P. Ware jw44 at evansville.edu
Tue Sep 29 08:59:19 EDT 1998




This is in regard to Carl's most recent post on this subject (sorry about
not including the relevant part of Carl's message, but I have not been
able to figure out how to do this without including all the messages--if
someone can tell me how to do this I would appreciate it!).  I also
somehow missed Carl's Friday post on this, and thus beg your pardon if I
am bringing up something already discussed.  

I may be going out on a limb here, since I have not gone back to check.
But if memory serves, I believe demonstratives such as HAUTH in Lk 2:2,
when used as adjectives, are always in explicit attributive position.
I don't know of any exceptions in the NT to this practice.  If so, "This
census" would require HAUTH H APOGRAPHH.  To my knowledge, demonstratives
without the article, such as HAUTH in Luke 2:2, function as pronouns, not
adjectives.  Would the sense of Luke 2:2 then not have to be something
like, "This was the first census"--with HAUTH being the deictic pronominal
subject, APOGRAPHH the predicate, and PRWTH the attributive complement of
APOGRAPHH?  

Jim Ware




More information about the B-Greek mailing list