[B-Greek] Matthew 26:29 and TOUTOU TOU

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Sun Jan 25 11:42:59 EST 2004


At 6:07 PM +0200 1/25/04, Retief M <13365134 at sun.ac.za> wrote:
>Dear B-Greek Members:
>
>I have noticed a tendency in some modern translations to translate TOUTOU TOU
>as "any" (thus translating the first part of Matthew 26:29 as "I shall not
>drink any wine
>till I drink it with you anew...), based on the assumption that it is a
>so-called Latinate
>use of the Greek (if my terminology is not mistaken). Could anyone explain
>this idea
>of a "Latinate use" of the Greek with regard to TOUTOU TOU to me? I find
>it somewhat
>confusing, and cannot understand why TOUTOU TOU is not translated as
>"this" in all
>translations of this passage.
>
>Any insights would be greatly appreciated.

It's not the TOUTOU TOU that accounts for "any" but rather it's EK +
genitive case form as a Latinate partitive expression; much earlier Greek
(e.g. Homeric) could use the partitive rather freely even as a subject or
object, e.g.

	TWN ANQRWPWN HLQON = "some people came"
	TOU OINOU EPION = "I drank some wine"

This is much less frequent in later Greek, although the partitive genitive
continues to be used with TIS

e.g. Mt 9:3 KAI IDOU TINES TWN GRAMMATEWN EIPAN EN hEAUTOIS

but in Mt 7:9 the Latinate EX hUMWN is used with hUMWN:

	H TIS ESTIN EX hUMWN ANQRWPOS, hON AITHSEI ...

-- 

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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