Acts 25: 27

Lauren Porter Lauren_Porter at asburyseminary.edu
Sat Sep 30 08:05:43 EDT 2000


nomre2me at home.com,Internet writes:
Need help with a stricly grammatical formulation:

Acts 25: 27 ALOGON GAR MOI DOKEI PEMPONTA DESMION MH KAI TAS KAT AUTOU
AITIAS SHMANAI

My question, does TAS form an articular infinitive with SHMANAI? and KAT
AUTOU TITIAS is a subordinate clause to it?  Basics I know, but the
infinitive often confuses me.
                                                                          
     Joseph Garnier
                                                                          
     Seattle WA
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~

Joseph, 

	Carlton and Clayton have already answered sufficiently your question
about the definite article TAS and its relation to KAT' AUTOU and AITIAS. 
However, I want to take a stab at clarifying the rest of the infintive
issue for you because it sounds to me like your having a little bit of
trouble figuring out how to use the infinitive in relation to all the
other verbal ideas.  
	Basically, I would suggest that you take SHMANAI as the completion of the
thought begun in DOKEI.  Thus, "It seems absurd to me not even to point
out the charges against him."  
	This, then, might well raise the question of what you do with PEMPONTA
DESMION.  In this case, I would suggest that you take it as a temporal
clause, such as "when sending a prisoner."  If I am reading the sentence
correctly, PEMPONTA agrees with the understood subject of the infinitive
(sc. ME ). Thus, if you were to render all of this in indirect discourse,
an understood "I" would function as the subject of the infinitive.  E.g.,
"It seems absurd to me that, when I am sending a prisoner, I wouldn't even
state the charges against him."
	Hope this helps. 

	Lauren Porter 
	Asbury Theological Seminary
     



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