[B-Greek] John 20:26

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Tue Mar 11 08:06:08 EST 2003


At 1:00 PM +0000 3/11/03, D Jongkind wrote:
>ERCETAI O IHSOUS TWN QURWN KEKLEISMENWN
>
>'Jesus came while the doors were locked up'
>
>What is the correct grammatical description of the participial clause TWN
>QURWN KEKLEISMENWN. Is it a genitive absolute or is it a genitive because it
>describes the 'time during which'? Or am I trying to make a distinction here
>between one and the same function of the genitive case?

It is indeed a genitive absolute; genitive of "time within which" would be
a category in which it could be pigeonholed only if the genitive were
governed by a preposition. When a noun in the genitive has a participle in
predicate position in agreement with it and there is no governing
preposition, then the noun constitutes the subject, the participle the
predicate of what amounts to a clause independent of the syntactic
structure of the main clause but functioning as an adverbial modifier of
the main clause. Others might describe it more scientifically, but I think
that's what's essential to a genitive absolute. More often than not it is
indeed used to indicate time or circumstances relating to a happening
described in the main clause.
-- 

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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