Luke 4:33, 35
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Wed May 16 06:42:05 EDT 2001
At 9:55 PM -0700 5/15/01, Kenneth Litwak wrote:
> I have two questions. In Luke 4:33, we read that
>there was a man with
>pneuma daimoniou akaqartou
>I'm trying to decide what kind of genitive this is.
>It could mean "a spirit of an unclean demon," that is,
>a spirit came from an unclean demon (leaving the demon
>wiht no spirit??), or it could mean, "a spirit of the
>type "unclean demon." Or, maybe it is partitive, "a
>spirit, an uclean demon one." How can we best decide?
I'd take it as "defining" or some might even want to call it
'appositional': "a spirit, an unclean demon." Technically speaking, Ken,
these differentiations invented by grammarians are nothing but descriptions
that assist translators. The genitive here--DAIMONIOU AKAQARTOU--simply
characterizes the PNEUMA as "an unclean demon type of spirit" or "spirit of
the type unclean demon."
> In 4:35 we read
>
>kai ripsan auton to daimonion eij to meson evxh/lqen
>ap' autou mhden blapsan auton
>
>Are we to take this to mean that "having thrown him
>into the midst, the demon came out, not having hurt
>him at all," or"having thrown him the demon in the
>midst (of the man) came out not having hurt him at
>all"? Why?
Ken, you asked this very same question and followed it up on March 23-24 of
this year and I gave you a pretty full response then; if you lost it you
can certainly consult the archives. You could also use our standard
transliteration instead of pasting the Greek text from a Bible program in
such a way that it reads as gobbledygook on any screen that doesn't have
that same font installed.
--
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics/Washington University
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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