Gal 2:20
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Fri Apr 9 12:53:14 EDT 1999
I'm omitting the message of Carlos Navarro to which Carlton is responding,
although I'll append little pieces of it where I want to respond
specifically to something Carlton has said. I think that the basic
grammatical accounts presented in Senhor Navarro's message are lifted
directly from the Boethetika Biblia of Euphylax Constantinos which is
posted at the web site in Brazil from which he is writing to us; I'm not
sure whether this is a modern work composed in the KAQAREUOUSA or a
Byzantine work, but it looks to me like its Greek is more akin to Attic
than to Koine and also it appears to me that its grammatical terminology is
consistent with that of grammarians of late antiquity.
At 1:57 PM +0400 4/8/99, Carlton Winbery wrote:
>C. Navarro wrote; [omitted] . . . . .
>
>Carl replied to this by pointing out that the two words PROSDIORISMOI and
>KATHGOROUMENA mean attributive and predicative respectively. I agree with
>this. I want to make some further comments on the discussion above.
>
>In reality both of these terms in modern Greek imply a further explanation
>or definition. They make those additional assertions in different ways. C.
>Navarro is certainly correct in his emphasis for PROSDIORISMOS where the
>modifying word or words follow the article as in THi TOU hUIOU. Again my
>assertion was that the article shows that the modifying element modifies
>PISTEI because the article agrees (concord) with this word in case, gender
>and number.
>
>On the other hand KATHGOROUMENA is the middle participial form of the verb
>KATHGOREW which means to categorize (most time in the sense of accuse) or
>to assign some meaning to. C. Navarro uses the clause hOTAN hH FRASIS EXHi
>KATHGOROUMENON EPIQETON. EPIQETON in modern Greek means "added." This
>adjective with the neuter article means "adjective."
I think that in this instance the term KATHGOROUMENON (neuter to agree with
EPIQETON, I believe) is actually passive and that it is used much as
Aristotle uses KATHGOREW, not in a forensic but in the
logical-grammatical-rhetorical sense of "to predicate"--so that EPIQETON
KATHGOROUMENON means "a predicated attribute." And I think EPIQETON here is
being used, as it was in the ancient grammarians, for any kind of
descriptive word or phrase that can be attached to a substantive by
implication or explicitly by putting an article before it. As Carlos has
put it quite succinctly:
>>In the Prosdiorismon construction, the article precedes the EPIQETA
>>(expressions
>>that reduces the extension of the name; EPIQETA can be adjectives,
>>prepositional phrases, genitives, or even a name used to restrict the
>>meaning). More
>>often than not, the EPIQETA becomes sandwiched between the article and the
>>name.
and indeed, all of the above "EPIQETA" can function in the same way in an
attributive construction: hO AGAQOS ANHR, hO EN THi POLEI ANHR, hO TOU
XANQIPPOU hUIOS, SIMWN hO ZHLWTHS.
> However, the modifying
>is done in a different manner as C. Navarro shows. It is best to think of
>this expression as needing a SUNDETIKON verb (connecting verb).
One of the more common terms for the SUNDETIKON hRHMA is "copulative verb."
But of course this means precisely a CONNECTING verb--a verb that takes a
predicate nominative/accusative, depending on whether that verb is
indicative or infinitive or participle.
>Man, we got a lot of discussion out of such a simple construction as EN
>PISTEI ZW THi TOU hUIOU TOU QEOU. "I live by trusting the Son of God." (If
>indeed TOU hUIOU is objective genitive!) Nouns of action are nouns in Greek
>that express a verbal idea. You can have objective and subjective genitives
>only with such nouns. Most nouns in Greek which also have a verb form
>(cognate) are nouns of action, i.e., PISTIS and PISTEUW.
I don't think there's any disagreement at all about how this phrase holds
together grammatically, but I have to add one "concluding unscientific
postscript" about subjective and objective genitive: while context may help
to determine whether hH TOU QEOU AGAPH means "God's love (for us)" or "love
of/for God" in some particular instance, there is absolutely no
morphological distinction between this phrase when interpreted as a
"subjective" and/or as an "objective" genitive--and the syntactical
distinction may very well be "in the eye of the (particular) grammarian."
And this is why, although we may be confident that phrasing such as PISTEUW
EIS TON IHSOUN means that faith/confidence is directed toward Jesus as its
object, there is no way to determine, unless the context makes it
crystal-clear, whether hH TOU IHSOU CRISTOU PISTIS means "faith directed to
Jesus Christ" or "faithfulness of Jesus Christ." Often enough the context
makes clear how the phrase should be interpreted, but there are instances
in the GNT where the issue is NOT clear.
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics/Washington University
One Brookings Drive/St. Louis, MO, USA 63130/(314) 935-4018
Home: 7222 Colgate Ave./St. Louis, MO 63130/(314) 726-5649
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/
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