[B-Greek] Nominative to verb

Mark Wilson emory2oo2 at hotmail.com
Fri May 9 21:33:19 EDT 2003


Mitch:

You wrote:

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hH MARTURIA TOU IWANNOU

My question is why can you convert a nominative noun into a verb (John 
testifies) which converts the genitive into its subject. I see that this is 
a verbal noun, but I don't see why the writer wouldn't use the verb form if 
he wanted it to function verbally.
------------

I think Dr. Wallace refers to constructs of this nature as being "packed" 
with information. The job of the exegete is to "unpack" the intended 
meaning. If that is your question, I think you should think of "unpacking" 
the layers in a methodical way.

The first layer is the Lexical layer. This layer is comprised of the 
individual words you see.
The second layer is the Syntactical Layer. This is how the individual words 
are grouped and RELATE to each other.
The third (or bottom) layer is the Semantical Layer. This is where the 
thought of the author resides. This is called the "deep structure" level by 
some linguists.

In your above example, the Lexical layer consists of the 4 words (hH 
MARTURIA TOU IWANNOU)
The Syntactical layer consists of grouping, within each phrase and how the 
phrases relate to each other (how hH relates to MARTURIA
how TOU relates to IWANNOU
how both hH MARTURIA relate to both TOU IWANNOU)

To determine how the Genitive phrase modifies the Nominative phrase, run 
down your list of how Genitives can function. Is it a Genitve of 
Relationship, of Possession, Subjective Genitive, Verbal Genitive, Genitive 
of Reason, Genitive of Purpose, etc.? Most semantical functions will be 
eliminated rather quickly just based on the first two layers.

Soon you will be left with relatively few real options of how these phrases 
relate. If your question is how do you choose the correct option after 
reaching this bottom level, I think you now enter into the phase of how well 
you are familiar with this author's style, how well this author has 
developed the particular context in question, etc. In other words, this 
bottom, final phase is where exegetes can disagree. This is why hermeneutics 
is often called both a science and art.

My thoughts,

Mark Wilson

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