[B-Greek] hO in LXX Ecclesiastes 2:24

Albert Pietersma albert.pietersma at sympatico.ca
Thu Feb 6 01:38:03 EST 2003


hO is a relative pronoun, acc sg neuter. Syntactically it functions as direct
object in all three instances. How to translate the lines? Remember that the
Greek of Eccles. is hyper-literal. I would gloss it as:
Good does not exist in a person:
what he shall eat and what he shall drink and what he shall show to his soul
is (what is) good in his trouble.
This indeed I saw, because it is from God's hand.

In other words: that's all there is!
Al


Yamazaki-Ransom wrote:

> The text is:
>
> OUK ESTIN AGAQON EN ANQRWPWi
> hO FAGETAI KAI hO PIETAI KAI hO DEIXEI THi YUCHi AUTOU
> AGAQON EN MOCQWi AUTOU
> KAI GE TOUTO EIDON EGW hOTI APO CEIROS TOU QEOU ESTIN
>
> What puzzles me is the use of hO in the second line.  Is this to be taken as
> a nominative masculine demonstrative pronoun (as in Smyth 1099)?  Or is this
> a neuter relative pronoun, either in nominative or accusative (which doen' t
> seem to me to make much sense in this context)?  In either case, what would
> the grammatical relationship between line 2 and its surrounding lines (1, 3)
> be?
>
> Thank you for your insights.
>
> Kazuhiko Yamazaki-Ransom
> Trinity Evangelical Divinity School
> Deerfield, IL
>
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--
Albert Pietersma
Dept of Near&Middle Eastern Civilizations
4 Bancroft Avenue
University of Toronto
Toronto M5S 1C1
albert.pietersma at sympatico.ca
homepage http://www.chass.utoronto.ca:8080/~pietersm/




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