[B-Greek] Re:Matt 15:38 hOI ESQIONTES

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Mon Jun 28 23:15:19 EDT 2004


At 8:51 AM +0900 6/29/04, moon at mail.sogang.ac.kr wrote:
>[MOON]
>> >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?
>>
>
>[CARL]
>> 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.
>> --
>
>[MOON] I did not forget that  the temporal reference of a
>present participle is relative to the time of the main verb.
>The problem was that "those who were eating were four thousand men" sounded
>odd in the context of this sentence. That statement can be made while
>the men were eating. But the statement of 15:38 were made after the statement
>that they took seven baskets full of pieces. It means that
>the reference time of 15:39 is after the event of eating. So, taking 13:38
>to mean "those who were eating were four thousand" is not reasonable.
>
>But Carl, you said we can take 15:38 to mean "those who ate were four
>thousand men".
>This is all new to me. To me "those who ate were four thousand men" means
>the same as "those who had eaten were four thousand men". But this requires
>a aorist participle.
>
>I thought that perhaps the best way to make sense of 15:38 would be to take it
>as "The eaters were four thousand men". But I am not sure if we can take
>this route.

Moon, I think your problem is more one of translation than of the Greek
construction. Certainly you can convey it as "the eaters were 4,000." It's
just that we don't ordinarily express that notion that way in English; you
might say "the ones eating"--but when were they eating? Clearly eating when
they were served.
-- 

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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