[B-Greek] Mt 23:8, gram subj?
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Thu Sep 25 12:25:18 EDT 2003
At 11:32 AM -0400 9/25/03, bgreek at ntresources.com wrote:
>What is the grammatical subject in Matthew 23:8b? hEIS? or hO DIDASKALOS?
>
>(hEIS GAR ESTIN hUMWN hO DIDASKALOS)
>
>More importantly, what is the *grammatical* basis for the answer? I've been
>reading Lane McGaughy's diss. ("Descriptive Analysis of EINAI," pp. 23-65)
>as well as Wallace's grammar (pp. 40-48) and don't find any guidelines that
>cover this instance in which one of the nominatives is an *adjective*
>(hEIS).
I'd say that the grammatical subject is hO DIDASKALOS and that hEIS is the
predicate word, following the standard rule that the subject is the
nominative that's marked with an article. I've always thought of this verse
as parallel to Deuteronomy 6:4 (AKOUE, ISRAHL, KURIOS hO QEOS hHMWN KURIOS
hEIS ESTIN. Of course one may raise the question here whether the second
KURIOS is a new subject or a repetition of the initial KURIOS to which the
epithets are attached. But inasmuch as the Greek of the LXX makes the ESTIN
explicit where it may or may not be implicit in the Hebrew, depending on
how one prefers to read the Hebrew, hEIS there belongs to the predicate
whether as a predicate adjective or as a modifier of KURIOS.
--
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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