[B-Greek] luke 9.13

Maurice A. O'Sullivan mauros at iol.ie
Mon Sep 20 07:18:00 EDT 2004


At 16:39 19/09/2004, Garbo Hui wrote:

>Could anyone help me to solve a problem on the grammatical use of one word 
>in Greek?
>(1)In Luke 9.13,  there is OI DE EIPAN, why there is an article OI appears 
>here? what does it demonstrate? Is OI DE is an idiomatic use in Greek, or 
>it's just a style of Lukan's writting?

" ...the masc. or fem. article in the Nominative with DE (accented and 
spaced as two separate words ) provides a very common way of saying > and 
he (she)<, or >bur he(she)< " p.123 Moule, C.F.D. An Idiom Book of N.T 
Greek. Cambridge: C.U.P, 1984.

You probably already know the idiom      MEN ...........DE, usually 
rendered literally as " on the one hand ...... and on the other ".
In the case of Lk. 9:13, here there is another form of apposition  >  He 
replied ..........but they said....< [ This seems the more common way of 
translating, but I see the NRSV has " But he said .......they said ". I 
wonder why? ]

>
>(2)H ARTOI PENTE KAI ICQUES
>What is the meaning of H ? Does H...KAI has the relation?

No, look at the accents -- this is H used with the preceding neuter 
comparative PLEION  > we do not have more than 5 .....  [ this, BTW, 
according to my software, is not only a NT hapax, but does not appear in 
the LXX ]
Porter [ Porter, Stanley E. Idioms of the Greek New Testament. 2nd. Ed. 
Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1994.] uses the term "adversative conjunction " 
which is useful.


Hope this helps.




Maurice A. O'Sullivan  [ Bray, Ireland ]
mauros at iol.ie





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