[B-Greek] Eusebius Revisited

Peter Kirby kirby at earthlink.net
Sun Sep 21 20:36:05 EDT 2003


On Wednesday 17 September 2003 11:30 pm, Stephen C. Carlson wrote:
> At 09:23 PM 9/17/03 -0700, Peter Kirby wrote:
> >A while back I posed a question about Historia Ecclesiastica, Book 1,
> > Chapter 11, Section 7.  The TLG CD-ROM offers this Greek text:
> >
> >TAU=TA PERI\ TOU= *)IWA/NNOU DIELQW\N, KAI\ TOU= SWTH=ROS H(MW=N KATA\
> > TH\N AU)TH\N TOU= SUGGRA/MMATOS I(STORI/AN W(=DE/ PWS ME/MNHTAI:
> >
> >There was a brief discussion about whether Eusebius implies that the Jesus
> >passage came after the John passage, as "an aorist participle usually
> > refers to action antecedent to that of the main verb."
>
> I would say that the aorist participle here is past from the point of
> view of the present.  Although the main verb is perfect in form, its
> sense is really present (see the LSJ entry s.v. MIMNHSKW), and it is
> certainly the present effect of the testimonium on the reader that is
> being emphasized.

Stephen, thank you for this contribution.  Combined with Carl W. Conrad's 
earlier suggestion that the last phrase means "more or less as follows," this 
would raise the probability that Eusebius had recast the Testimonium.

Does everyone agree with the interpretation of the main verb as referring to 
the present effect on the reader, or are there different opinions?

-- 
Peter Kirby (Student at Fullerton College, CA)
5:32pm up 2:07, Mandrake Linux 9.0, kernel 2.4.19-16mdk on AMD Athlon 750
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