[B-Greek] Mark 4 hO...AUTO...ALLO...ALLA
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Sat Oct 9 16:56:30 EDT 2004
At 11:30 AM -0700 10/9/04, Mitch Larramore wrote:
>Mark 4 has the following reference to the "seed" that
>is sown. The first reference in verse 4 indicates that
>hO MEN fell, and that the birds came to devour AUTO
>(the hO MEN). The next reference to this seed that was
>sown is ALLO, again in the singular. In verse 8, ALLA
>is used, switching to the plural. I'm assuming the
>collective sense is meant with hO MEN and AUTO and
>ALLO. So what is the significance of switching to the
>plural ALLA by the time you get to verse 8?
>
>4 KAI EGENETO EN TWi SPEIREIN hO MEN EPESEN PARA THN
>hODON..... KATEFAGEN AUTO....
>
>7 KAI ALLO EPESEN....
>
>8 KAI ALLA EPESEN ...
I don't think there's anything more involved in this than what's comparable
in our own English usage: "one ... another ... others." Of course we can
say "some ... others ... yet/still others," but my impression is that
there's something natural about thinking of the first two instances one
confronts individually while we categorize the remaining instances in a
collective plurality. Older Greek had three numbers of nouns: singular,
dual, plural, while later the dual fell away except for items that came in
natural pairs (TW OFQALMW, TW WMW, TW WTE) and ultimately fell away even
for them (hOI OFQALMOI, hOI WMOI, TA WTA).
--
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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