Subjective and Objective Genitives
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Sat Oct 30 17:58:52 EDT 1999
At 7:50 PM +0200 10/30/99, Kevin Smith wrote:
>Dear friends
>
>RE: EPIFANEIAN THS DOCHS (Titus 2:13)
>
>I'm having some trouble distinguishing between subjective and objective
>genitives. I learned most of my grammar from Wallace (GGBB, 1996). He
>recommends that when one suspects one of these categories, the key to
>identification is to turn the head noun into a verb and turn the genitive
>into its subject or object. Furthermore, when describing the objective
>genitive Wallace explains that "an objective genitive can only occur with
>verbal nouns which imply a transitive verb" (p. 117).
>
>Yet Gordon Fee, in his commentary on the Pastorals, regards the above
>example as an objective genitive, explaining that it gives "the 'what' of
>the manifestation."
>
>However, EPIFANEIAN THS DOXHS seems to convert naturally into "the glory
>appears," hence a subjective genitive. The verbal idea in EPIFANEIAN seems
>to be intransitive, which would mean the construction could not be an
>objective genitive.
>
>Since I have great respect for Fee, I suspect I'm missing something here.
>Could someone please tell me what it is, that is, why EPIFANEIAN THS DOXHS
>is objective and not subjective?
The question is whether you are understanding the force of EPIFANEIA as
transitive or intransitive; when you say "the glory appears" or "appearing
of the glory" then you're looking at it as intransitive. If, on the other
hand, you're looking at EPIFANEIA as meaning "demonstrating the glory,"
then it's a transitive usage and you're considering THS DOXHS as an
"objective" genitive. It should be remembered, however, as we've said more
than once in recent weeks, that "subjective" and "objective" genitive have
more to do with our need as English-speakers than it does with a sharp
distinction or even a real distinction in the Greek grammar: the Greek
speaker might just as soon have understood this phrase as "glory's
appearance" as "demonstrating glory."
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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