[B-Greek] Matt 15:38 hOI ESQIONTES = those who ate?
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Mon Jun 28 06:28:37 EDT 2004
At 11:01 AM +0900 6/28/04, moon at mail.sogang.ac.kr wrote:
>Hi,
>
>why the present participle noun hOI ESQIONTES in matt 15:38?
>
>hOI DE ESQIONTES HSAN TETRAKISXILIOI ADNRES.
>
>Why not the aorist participle hOI ESQISANTES?
>
>The use of hOI ESQIONTES means that the sentence should be taken
>to mean
>
>Those who were eating were four thousand men?
Moon, I think you may be forgetting that the temporal reference of a
present participle is relative to the time of the main verb, here HSAN;
we'll still English hOI ESQIONTES as "those who ate" or "those who were
eating." If we were to use an aorist participle (and it would be hOI
FAGONTES--there is no aorist formed from the root of ESQIW) it would mean
"those who had eaten"--the temporal reference would still be relative to
the time of the main verb.
--
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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