[B-Greek] John 13:2 Genitive Absolute

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Tue Apr 8 13:06:35 EDT 2003


At 11:37 AM -0400 4/8/03, <bertdehaan at gosympatico.ca> wrote:
>John 13:2 reads as follows;  KAI DEIPNOU GINOMENOU, TOU DIABOLOU HDH
>BEBLHKOTOS EIS THN KARDIAN hINA PARADOI AUTON IOUDAS SIMWNOS ISCARIWTHS,
> The way I understand it, KAI DEIPNOU is a genitive absolute construction.
>What about DIABOLOU HDH BEBLHKOTOS? Is it a genitive absolute as well? And
>if so, does EIS THN KARDIAN belong to this genitive absolute even though
>it is not in the genitive case? If it does not belong to it but to what
>follows, then why is IOUDAS not in the genitive to indicate that it is
>Judas' heart?

Yes, we do have two genitive absolutes here, and yes, EIS THN KARDIAN is an
adverbial clause construing with BEBLHKOTOS in the second clause, and yes,
hINA PARDOI AUTON is a noun clause functioning as the direct object of
BEBLHKOTOS, then IOUDAS SIMWNOS ISCARIWTHS is the subject of PARADOI. Thus

and dinner taking place,
the devil having put into his heart
		     that Judas son of Simon Iscariot would betray him ...

Since this is really part of a larger sentence structure that extends, in a
sort of run-on sentence with several coordinate clauses through verse 5,
the subject of the main verb (Jesus, carried forward from verse 1) is not
openly expressed, and the main verb itself, EGEIRETAI, doesn't appear until
verse 4.

The structure here is not really all that difficult, but one of the
trickiest things about ordinary narrative Greek is figuring out the
referents of the 3rd person pronouns, such as AUTON in 13:2 must refer to
Jesus (the one Judas would betray), while in verse 13:2 AUTWi also refers
to Jesus. I think English is a bit more careful about using third-person
pronouns (although perhaps not in colloquial diction), but it doesn't take
an awful lot of thinking to figure out these referents.
-- 

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/


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