[B-Greek] Genitive in 2 Cor 1:5 -- a semantic dimension

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Sun Jun 6 18:14:33 EDT 2004


At 4:19 PM -0400 6/6/04, Chet Creider wrote:
>Please excuse the tardiness of this note.  It reflects my indecision about
>whether to add anything to a discussion that was interesting and with which
>I very largely agreed.  However, I feel that the semantic dimension has
>received less attention than it deserves, and for that reason am sending
>this commentary.  I have excluded all discussion of translation questions,
>partly because it is not something I know much about, but also because I
>believe that its consideration led to a devaluation of semantic matters.

I want to thank Chet Creider for this thoughtful review and analysis of
stances taken in the recent discussion of the adnominal genitive. Makes one
think that perhaps there's some hidden meaning in Lk 7:35: KAI EDIKAIWQH hH
SOFIA APO PANTWN TWN TEKNWN AUTHS. I've always found something enigmatic in
the phrase of APO PANTWN TWN TEKNWN here: is it a sort of agent
construction "put to rights by all her children"--or is it ablatival "has
proved right quite apart from all her children"?

Earlier today I commented on the broad extension of EN + dative in the
Koine far beyond the earlier relatively narrow confinement of its meaning
to the locative--such that in a few instances EN + dative seems little
different from EIS + accusative. So there are occasions where one wonders
whether APO + genitive is really different in sense from hUPO + genitive or
even carries the range of senses that AB + ablative has in imperial Latin.
Whatever the truth about these prepositional phrases, I am convinced that
they constitute part of the evidence for my assertion that Koine Greek is a
language in flux.
-- 

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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