[B-Greek] Revelation 13:18

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Mon Jul 5 20:46:04 EDT 2004


At 8:36 PM -0400 7/5/04, EgwEimi at aol.com wrote:
>
>In a message dated 7/5/2004 2:03:45 PM Pacific Daylight Time,
>ronpt at comcast.net writes:
>
>This  question concerns the explanatory clause ARIQMOS GAR ANQRWPOU
>ESTIN, in  which both nouns are anarthrous.  John has used the term
>"number"  three times in this verse and the two others have teh definite
>article.  How would this best be understood grammatically, and I have
>read the comments of Wallace in GGBTB.
>
>
>The generic "it" should be regarded as the subject.
>"It is a person's number" is a worthwhile translation,
>although "it is the number of a person" is reasonable;
>both say the same thing.

There is no generic "it" in Greek, although "it" and "there" are used as
expletives in English when the subject of a verb does not in fact precede
the verb, as in the case of an existential "be": EGW EIMI is English "It is
I" (or current colloquial English "It's me."

Perhaps what you mean to say is that the subject of the clause in question
is carried forward and implicit from the preceding clause, TON ARIQMON TOU
QHRIOU.

>In context, the number belongs to a designated human
>being, called the "wild animal" (QHRIOS), whose
>number can be calculated (YHFISATW, ..."should
>calculate...").  This is the number represented by a
>person's name (v. 17).
>
>The passage does not name any particular person, but
>the description of this wild animal is supposed to
>enable the first century reader to identify him.  This
>identification, though, is more a matter of the structure
>and nature of the work than of the Greek language,
>per se.
>
>Frank

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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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