[B-Greek] Lk 21:1 ptc, adj or subst?

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Wed Oct 27 23:56:46 EDT 2004


At 3:40 PM -0400 10/27/04, Scott Wells wrote:
>Lk 21:1    EIDEN TOUS BALLONTAS EIS TO GAZOFULAKION TA DWRA AUTWN PLOUSIOUS
>
>Is it possible/likely that the article TOUS should be read primarily with
>PLOUSIOUS and that the participle BALLONTAS is therefore adverbial (trans:
>"he saw the rich putting their gifts into the treasury").
>
>Or is that too many intervening words, thus the article modifies the
>participle, making it substantival (trans: adjectival "he saw the rich who
>were putting their gifts into the treasury")?

TOUS BALLONTAS is already substantival, and in terms of traditional
categorization PLOUSIOUS must be predicative rather than attributive, i.e.
adverbial rather than adjectival in function. Although regularly translated
"saw the rich putting their gifts into the treasury," I think that I'd
understand this either as an adverbial usage of PLOUSIOUS "saw the ones
putting their gifts into the treasury as wealthy men" or else as a case of
indirect discourse and understand ONTAS with PLOUSIOUS: "saw that those who
put their gifts into the treasury were wealthy men." At any rate I think
that if PLOUSIOUS were intended to function attributively (adjectivally)
with TOUS BALLONTAS a second TOUS would have been required to precede
PLOUSIOUS.
-- 

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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