[B-Greek] SOI in Mark 2:18

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Mon Feb 9 13:11:48 EST 2004


At 1:00 PM -0500 2/9/04, Polycarp66 at aol.com wrote:
>In a message dated 2/9/2004 12:45:58 PM Eastern Standard Time,
>Clwinbery at aol.com writes:
>
>It is always with fear and trepidation that I question Carl Conrad, but in
>A.T. Robertson, p. 541, there is the listing of what is called the "dative
>of possession." He gives several egs. that must be dative and they
>indicate the relationship of antecedent to a noun that is generally but
>not purely possession.
>Two interesting egs. are Acts 8:21 OUK ESTIN SOI MERIS, lit. "there is no
>part for you" or "you have no part in this matter."
>I would quickly note that there is no article here to put SOI in an
>attributive relationship with MERIS and it could not agree with it like an
>adjective would. I must be the the pronoun but it does tell something
>about the noun.
>
>Another interesting eg. is Matt. 16:22. OU MH ESTAI SOI TOUTO, lit. "This
>will never be your thing." of "This will never happen to you." Again the
>article is not there but is that decissive since there are many places in
>the NT where the dative with and without a preposision are between the
>article and the noun serving to modify the noun.
>
>This is the reason that Jim Brooks and I chose this very example (hO AUTOS
>TUPOS) as an example of Robertson's possessive dative, which seems in some
>of his examples to do a little more than show possession.
>
>_______
>
>But could these not be just as easily accounted for as a dative of
>respect?  "This will never happen -- with respect to you"; "there is no
>part - with respect to you"?  It seems that a possesive usage would be
>stretching it a bit.

Both the examples cited (Acts 8:21, Mt 16:22) have ESTI; one generally
limits the dative of possession to instances with EINAI or GINESQAI. At any
rate, the text of Mk 2:18 is very different: in hOI DE SOI MAQHTAI, SOI
must be the pronominal adjective; As I said earlier, I can't conceive of a
dative of possession used adjectivally in a noun phrase constituting the
subject of a clause.
-- 

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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