[B-Greek] EPI TO AUTO

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Wed Jun 30 19:32:35 EDT 2004


At 10:02 AM -1000 6/30/04, Jan Hoogland wrote:
>Dear Andrew,
>
>Your curiosity about EPI TO AUTO is perceptive.
>
>What is missing in a translation, obviously, as English grammar does not
>have such a device, is the force of the accusative. Generally, the case of
>a preposition indicates the direction of the action: the genitive answers
>to 'where from?', the dative to 'where at?', and the accusative to 'where
>to'. The (Greek) meaning of EPI remains the same in all cases ('upon'). An
>English translation may try to account for the case by translating the
>combination as 'upon', 'on', and 'on to' respectively but this is often
>inaccurate.

This is somewhat misleading: while an ablatival genitive may indicate
separation FROM or movement AWAY FROM, the partitive genitive normally
indicates position WITHIN WHICH--and EPI is used with the partitive
genitive, not with the ablatival genitive; thus EPI THS QALASSHS means "on
(the surface of) the sea" without spelling out the point of rest, which
would call for a locative dative.

>Compare for example the use of the accusative of EPI in Mat 10:29:
>
>"And not one (sparrow) of them shall fall to the ground . . . ."

Yes, EPI + accusative means "upon" or "onto," sometimes with a notion of
forceful or even hostile impact.

>versus the use of the genitive case of EPI in Mat 6:10:
>
>"your will be done on earth . . . ."
>
>The prayer never made much sense to me until I realized that the direction
>of the action is the reverse of what the translation suggests. In this
>case it may be impossible to account for the genitive in a translation.

There's nothing odd about EPI GHS: reference here is not to some particular
point on earth but to earth's surface broadly speaking, as we might say,
"on the face of the earth." And that would, to use your phrasing, "account
for the genitive," although I think that what you mean is "represent" or
"convey the semantic force of" the preposition as used with the genitive.
-- 

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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