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

Iver Larsen ialarsen at multitechweb.com
Thu Oct 28 12:56:27 EDT 2004


>
>
> 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")?
>
> thanks,
> Scott Wells
> scott.alton.wells at us.army.mil

There is agreement among English versions about the following understanding:
"he saw the/some rich (people) putting their gifts into the collection box"
This is equivalent in meaning to
"he saw the/some rich (people) who were putting their gifts into the
collection box"
Or one could say:
"he saw that some rich (people) were putting their gifts into the collection
box".

This supports your first suggestion that TOUS determines PLOUSIOUS, an
adjective here used substantively, as in English.
The simplest analysis is to take TOUS PLOUSIOUS as the head noun, modified
by a participial clause. I do not see it as a problem that the participle
comes before the head noun: TOUS BALLONTAS PLOUSIOUS, and the prepositional
locative phrase as well as the object nominal phrase are needed to complete
the thought of BALLONTAS. The BALLOUSAN in the next sentence also has both
an object and a locative phrase.
To take TOUS BALLONTAS as substantival creates serious problems for how to
analyze PLOUSIOUS. I don't think it is a great problem in Greek to have a
number of words intervening between the determiner and the head noun, as
long as the intervening words form a tight semantic unit.

I think the reason that all versions go with your first suggestion is that
there is a clear contrast in the text between
a. The rich who were putting their (big) gifts into the box,
and
b. The poor widow who was putting her small gift into the box.

Iver Larsen




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