Luke 12: 27
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Wed Jan 19 06:45:10 EST 2000
At 10:07 PM -0800 1/18/00, Joseph Garnier wrote:
>I am having difficulty with the grammar of the passage:
>
>hOIS OUK ESTIN TAMEION OUDE APOQHKH
>
>It appears to mean: which is not a barn, nor a storehouse, but the idea of
>ravens/crows as either of those is ridiculous. Can someone with a more
>established sense of reasoning tell me how is goes together, then explain
>why.
>
The passage is Luke 12:24 rather than 12:27; the construction is a relative
clause with hOIS as a dative referring back to the ravens and the syntax of
it is Dative of possession: the Dative of possession regularly appears with
an existential ESTI(N) as here: "for whom there is neither storehouse nor
barn." The normal strategy for "Englishing" this construction is to make
the word in the dative the subject of a sentence and convert it thus: "who
have neither storehouse nor barn."
It's always been curious to me that the Dative of possession construction
is not made one of the very first constructions to be learned among common
dative constructions, because it's really an everyday usage.
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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