[B-Greek] John 13:2 Genitive Absolute

bertdehaan at gosympatico.ca bertdehaan at gosympatico.ca
Tue Apr 8 13:42:27 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?

> cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu replied:
 
> 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.
 
Thanks Carl.  My Greek reading is still quite slow, so these long sentences sometimes cause me some confusion.
My progress is slow, but since I subscribed to B-Greek I can noticed progress again. I appreciate your explanation.
Bert de Haan.



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