[Fwd: Tense of TETAGMENOI in Acts 13:48]

Moon-Ryul Jung moon at saint.soongsil.ac.kr
Sat Jul 3 05:20:14 EDT 1999


On 07/02/99, ""clayton stirling bartholomew" 
<c.s.bartholomew at worldnet.att.net>" wrote:
> >>I would appreciate some help in understanding the use of verb tense in
> >>dependent clauses.  The text reads;  ...KAI EPISTEUSAN OSOI HSAN
> >>TETAGMENOI EIS ZWHN AIWNION.  I take the dependent clause as an
> >>adverbial relative clause, either of condition or possibly comparison
> >>(yes?).  Is the use of the periphastic pluperfect relative to the main
> >>verb, implying the action occurred prior to the action of the main verb,
> >>or is this only true with participles (non-periphrastic, that is)?  I'm
> >>just interested in the grammar, please.
> >
> >  It is a *substantive* clause (the subject). From a syntactic point
> > of view some people would prefer not to call here O(/SOI a relative, as
> > long as a) it is the subject of his own subordinate clause, but, b) it ha=
> s
> > no antecedent or consecuent, either implicit or explicit. (In Spanish som=
> e
> > call it a "relacionante", bit I don't know the English term)
> >
> >
> > ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> > Daniel Ria=F1o Rufilanchas
> > Madrid, Espa=F1a
> >
> 
> Daniel, Paul, Moon-Ryul,
> 
> Yes, I can see this as one way to read this text. However , I see
> another way of reading it. If we take TA EQNH as the subject of all
> three finite verbs then we can take hOSOI HSAN TETAGMENOI EIS ZWHN
> AIWNION as limiting the scope of TA EQNH. If you read the text in this
> manner it is this limited set of TA EQNH that is performing the action
> in all three finite verbs. Doubtless someone will say hOSOI should be a
> neuter plural if it is to be used like this but I don't see that as a
> big hurdle to get over since the subject under discussion is the men who
> believed who were, oh by the way, Gentiles.
> 
> OK, so this is a little far fetched. Your reading is probably correct.
> 

[Moon]

I wonder if the following is OK grammatically speaking:

TA EQNH EPISTEUSAN  hOSOI HSAN TETAGMENOI EIS ZWHN AIWNION 

Here, the noun clause hOSOI... should be considered to be an apposition to
the subject TA EQNH. If hOSOI is a relative clause modifying TA EQNH, no
problem. But I wonder if the above apposition sounds OK.

Moon-Ryul Jung
Assistant Professor
Soongsil University,
Seoul, Korea
> P.O. Box 255 Seahurst WA 98062



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