[B-Greek] "episemoi en tois apostolois"

CWestf5155 at aol.com CWestf5155 at aol.com
Sun Aug 29 19:08:49 EDT 2004


<<In a message dated 8/29/2004 5:52:24 AM Mountain Standard Time, 
kimmo.huovila at helsinki.fi writes:
Thank you for your interesting comments. I agree that EN + dative very often 
means among. But does Bencancon-Spencer's paper (I do not have any immediate 
access to it) show any examples of EPISHMOS EN + dative in the sense of 
'among'? In other words, could there be a lexical (idiomatic) use that 
disambiguates the use with this lexeme? (I like cognitive grammar and 
construction grammar, and the question is presented in that spirit.)

I am aware that there is debate about this, but I have been unable to track 
down and have access to the articles. So I did a quick (very non-exhaustive) 
study with Perseus, and all examples it turned confirmed that 'among' with 
EPISHMOS is expressed with genitive, and 'to' is expressed either with dative 
or with EN+dative. But my study is in no way conclusive, since the sample was 
way too small.

>From the cursory observations I wonder if the parties are talking past each 
other, one saying that EN + dative means often among, and the other saying 
that the construction with EPISHMOS requires a genitive for the meaning of 
'among'. Is this impression true at all?

I have read Wallace's paper, but no counter arguments or refutations. Could 
you enlighten me on this? Is Bencancon-Spencer's paper perhaps somewhere 
online?>>

Kimmo,

Your asking if there could be a collocation of EPISOMOS + EN + genetive in 
Greek that a native Hellenistic speaker would recognize and use to express 
"prominent/outstanding among". 

 At least we can say that in Chysostom's time, there must not have been.  And 
again, if memory serves, there were a couple of examples of EPISOMOS + EN + 
dative in Hellenistic literature that meant "among"--but I don't have the 
search engine to confirm this today.

So it's a good question to pursue further, and I will try to locate the paper 
by Bensancon Spencer.  I'm certain it was supposed to be published, and I can 
certainly write the author.  Give me a couple of days... 

Cindy Westfall
Denver Seminary



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