[B-Greek] Acts 22,6

Martin Culy MCuly at briercrest.ca
Fri Apr 9 22:59:27 EDT 2004


 At 7:40 PM -0700 4/8/04, Eddie Mishoe wrote:
>EGENETO DE MOI POREUOMENWi KAI EGGIZONTI THi DAMASKWi
>PERI MESHMBRIAN EXAIFNHS EK TOU OURANOU PERIASTRAYAI
>FWS hIKANON PERI EME
>
>Culy/Parsons note that the two participles,
>POREUOMENWi KAI EGGIZONTI, cannot be adverbial since
>they have no verb to modify (EGENETO and PERIASTRAYAI
>have different subjects), although they do give them a
>"temporal" translation. Any suggestions as to how
>these function syntactically?

They are certainly adverbial participials, that is to say circumstantial
participles: "It happened to me when I was traveling and nearing
Damascus
...".
I suppose this could be a quibble, but participles always agree with a
substantive or pronoun; participles could be classified in terms of
their
function as substantival (hO TRECWN, "the one who runs"), adjectival
(TOUS
DOULOUS TOUS APODIDRASKONTAS, "the slaves who are running away") or
adverbial (hOI DOULOI hEALWSAN APODIDRAASKONTES, "the slaves were
apprehended as they were running away"). Adverbial participles may also
be
called "circumstantial" participles. So POREUOMENWi and EGGIZONTI are
certainly not adverbs, but how it could be said that they are not
"adverbial" I don't understand.
-- 

Carl W. Conrad

_____________________

The comment in Culy/Parsons is based on an argument presented in a recent
article entitled, âEURoeThe Clue is in the Case: Distinguishing Adjectival
and Adverbial ParticiplesâEUR [Perspectives in Religious Studies 30 (2003):
441-53], where I argue that adverbial participles, which function like
adverbs and modify verbs, are generally coreferential with the finite verb
they modify, i.e., they have the same subject.  To show that the subject of
the participle is the same as the subject of the finite verb, the participle
will bear the case of the main verbâEUR(tm)s subject (nominative).  If the
subject of an adverbial participle was different than the subject of the
main verb, Greek writers used the genitive absolute construction, as a
âEURoeswitch referenceâEUR device.  The tendency to call oblique case
participles âEURoeadverbial,âEUR I believe, stems from the common tendency
to work from translation to syntax, rather than vice versa.  Because it
sounds good to translate Acts 22:6 using a temporal expression (âEURoewhen I
was traveling and nearing Damascus . . .âEUR), we conclude that the
participle must be adverbial/temporal.  The PRS article suggests that if
Greek used genitive case whenever the subject of the participle was
different than the subject of the main verb, then other oblique case
participles must have an adjectival rather than an adverbial function.  Such
an analysis has implications for how we understand texts with putative
oblique case adverbial participles.  It also has significant implications
for how we teach students to analyze Greek participles.  I realize that
these claims go against conventional wisdom and welcome critique of the
article.

Martin Culy
Associate Professor of New Testament
Briercrest Biblical Seminary

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