do participles govern whole sentence or just next main verb?
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Thu Jul 22 07:08:57 EDT 1999
At 11:16 AM +0100 7/22/99, Jonathan Ryder wrote:
>Dear B-Greek
>
>Consider the following sentence (Mark 6:12-13):
>
>KAI EXELQONTES EKHRUXAN hINA METANOWSIN KAI DAIMONIA POLLA EXEBALLON KAI
>HLEIFON
>ELAIW POLLOUS ARRWSTOUS KAI EQERAPEUON
>
>My question:
>
>Does the participle EXELQONTES 'govern' just EKHRUXAN or all 4 verbs (EKHRUXAN
>... KAI ... EXEBALLON KAI HLEIFON ... KAI EQERAPEUON)?
I think my answer to this question would be: "Yes."
>What I'm really trying to get at is whether the 4 main verbs in this sentence
>are all at the same 'level' in the discourse or whether the participle
>with the
>1st verb marks it out as different etc.
I think it can be read both ways, but I think the fact that the first
finite verb is aorist makes it a bit easier to link the participle
primarily with EKHRUXAN. As I read it, KAI EXELQONTES ... METANOWSIN make
the main statement, and then the clauses with the imperfect verbs
EXEBALLON, HLEIFON, and EQERAPEUON proceed to spell out the normal
activities that accompany the basic activity of proclamation.
>In other words would it be natural to understand sentence as:
>
>and having gone out they preached (pause) and cast out demons and anointed and
>healed
>
>or:
>
>and having gone out they preached and cast out and anointed and healed?
I think that "more normal" English would be, "And they went out and
preached a gospel of repentance, proceeding to cast out many demons and
anoint many with oil and heal them." This is an interpretation, of course,
but I think this nicely illustrates characteristic patterns of Mark's Greek
and more ordinary English parataxis and hypotaxis. This nicely illustrates
the usage of those terms in the current thread with header, "Re Para-what?"
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University
Summer: 1647 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/
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