Periphrastic construction "EIMI + Participle" in Acts

Georgij Aristov aristov at mail.ur.ru
Tue May 2 09:43:21 EDT 2000


Dear B-Greekers,

I've got difficulties with grammatical analysis of Greek constructions 
consisting of the link (?) verb EIMI and the Present Participle of a 
notional verb.

Here are some examples from Acts:
ATENIZONTES HSAN (1, 10);
HSAN KATAMENONTES (1, 13);
HSAN PROSKARTEROUNTES (1, 14);
KATHRIQMHMENOS HN (1, 17).

The first of above mentioned examples is described in a commentary I've 
read as "characteristic of Luke periphrastic usage of Present Participle 
with the verb EIMI " and the second - simply as "periphrastic construction" 
(the other two are not determined in this respect).
 
RSV gives English couterparts that are formally equal to these Greek 
constructions, e.g. (they) were gazing for ATENIZONTES HSAN or (he) was 
numbered for KATHRIQMHMENOS HN. But what seems to be the same is not realy 
the same. In English we have an analytical form (here, accordingly, Past 
Continuous Ind. Act. and Past Common Ind. Pass.) of a word. In Greek text 
there is an analitic phrase consisting of two words which represent one 
part of sentence (predicate). The use of the English verb "be" is 
obligatory for building the appropriate grammatical form of a verb, so it 
is an auxiliary verb in this case. The Greek verb "EIMI" on the contrary is 
morphologicaly redundant. Our analitic phrases could be replaced by 
synthetic forms (Imperf. Ind. Act. or Pass.):
HTENIZON (Imperf. Ind. Act.) instead of ATENIZONTES HSAN,
KATEMENON (Imperf. Ind. Act.) instead of HSAN KATAMENONTES,
PROSEKARTERON (Imperf. Ind. Act.) instead of HSAN PROSKARTEROUNTES and
KATHRIQMEITO (Imperf. Ind. Pass.) instead of KATHRIQMHMENOS HN. 
So the verb "EIMI" should be considered here as a link verb, i.e. a part of 
compound nominal predicate. Am I right?

I think I am. But what actually interests me is the question: For what 
purpose does Luke use such periphrastic constructions? What makes him to 
apply a phrase instead of a single word? Is it just a mean of stylistics?

Another problematic point for me is the voice of KATHRIQMHMENOS HN. If the 
predicate were represented by synthetic form (KATHRIQMEITO), it would be 
definitely the passiv voice and the english analytical form "was numbered" 
- as it is sugested by KJV, YLT, ASV and RSV - would be a proper 
translation of it. But, as we see, the predicate being expressed by a 
phrase is a compound nominal predicate; the link verb of it has (and can 
have only) the active form, so that the whole phrase (despite the passive 
of the participle) is most likely the active voice (Do you agree?). Thus 
the NIV ("was one of our number") seems to be more adequate in this 
particular case.

Impatiently waiting for your replies,

georgij aristov















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