Rom. 12:15 infinitives

Jim West jwest at highland.net
Fri Aug 6 12:42:17 EDT 1999


At 12:27 PM 8/6/99 -0400, you wrote:
>
>Jim,
>
>I'll let Carl say for himself what he found misleading, but I was confused
>by your comment that "The participles contain the subject."  The rest made
>sense to me, but what did that mean?  

The subject- the one doing the weeping or rejoicing.

Surely the subject of the imperatives
>in 12:14 and of the infinitives in 12:15 is an implied "you" (hMEIS or
>hUMAS),

There is no need for an "implied" "you" because the participle functions in
such a way that it has both verbal and nominal aspects.  The verbal aspect
says what is bing done and the nominal aspect says who is doing that what.  

> which must be understood as the readers, a group distinct from the
>group(s) described in the participles.  Right?

No.  Paul is directly addressing them as a group and telling them to rejoice
with those in their midst who rejoice and weep with those in their midst who
weep.  The readers are the weepers and rejoicers.

>  And then in 12:15, the
>participles are the objects of prepositions (META).  So how could they
>"contain the subject" of the verbs?  I don't understand what you were trying
>to say here.

Again, participles work like this- they are nouns with the quality of a
verb- and verbs with the quality of a noun.  They are hybrid- containing the
action and the actor.  It is- then- impossible for them NOT to have a
subject inherent.
>
>ERRWSO,
>
>XPIC

Best,

Jim

+++++++++++++++++++++++++
Jim West, ThD
email- jwest at highland.net
web page-  http://web.infoave.net/~jwest




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