[B-Greek] 1 Tim. 3:16 and Greek poetry

CWestf5155 at aol.com CWestf5155 at aol.com
Fri Apr 23 14:37:31 EDT 2004


Ted, 

Yes, sequences like this are recognized literary devices that appeal to the 
ear.  I could go further and say there is also a semantic/rhetorical 
parallelism with the string of the aorist pasive indicative 3rd s verbs.  The repeated 
use of the passive looks particularly intentional--of course it maintains Jesus 
as the grammatical subject, but we would have recognized Jesus as the topic 
without all the passives.

I was thinking the same thing about the ease of achieving this effect with 
highly inflected languages.

Cindy Westfall
Denver

In a message dated 4/23/2004 12:19:37 PM Mountain Standard Time, 
tedsmath at yahoo.com writes:
--- CWestf5155 at aol.com wrote:
> 
> The poetic element that stands out is the repetition of QH in every
> line.

Are you saying that if I write a sentence in Greek with a sequence of
verbs or participles that all have the same suffix, that constitutes
one kind of Greek verse?

This sounds very much like rhyme or assonance in English poetry --
but much easier to attain in a language with so many suffixes set in
stone.

Thank you,


=====
Ted Shoemaker

A tantrum on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part.



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