Philippians 1:6

Daniel L Christiansen dlc at multnomah.edu
Sun Aug 15 14:04:44 EDT 1999


Joseph Brian Tucker wrote:

> PEPOIQWS AUTO TOUTO hOTI hO ENARYAMENOS EN hUIN ERGON AGAQON
EPITELESEI
> ARCI hHMERAS CRISTOU IHSOU
>
> 1. AGAQON does not have an article, Wallace refers to it as the fourth

> attributive position, why?

    There is certainly a problem, here, with terminology; however,
Wallace himself
notes that this is true.  The term "4th attributive" is arrived at in
the following
manner: 1) this adjective's use is contextually determined to be
attributive; 2) the
1st- 2nd-, and 3rd-attributive positions each require the presence of an
article,
and are thus determined as inappropriate for identifying this use;  3)
for want of a
better term, "4th-attributive" is chosen.
    When this same construction is contextually determined to be
predicate, Wallace
terms it an "(Anarthrous) 2nd Predicate."  Personally, I prefer a bit
more
consistency.  I would rather call this the 3rd predicate, following the
same logic
as in the above paragraph.  And, for pragmatic reasons, in the classroom
I simply
have the students call it the "ambiguous construction," and then have
them note
their contextual decision afterwards.
    Of course, I talk about consistency, but I have never published a
full-scale
grammar or syntax!  If the only difficulties in a grammar were
terminological, we
would all be using the same one . . . and this list would also be a much
quieter
place :)

Dan

--
Daniel L. Christiansen
Department of Bible
Multnomah Bible College
8435 NE Glisan Street
Portland, OR  97220
(Also Portland Bible College, Prof of Biblical Languages)
e-mail: dlc at multnomah.edu





More information about the B-Greek mailing list