[B-Greek] Women or Wives in Acts 21:5

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Wed Sep 22 14:13:59 EDT 2004


At 12:53 PM -0400 9/22/04, Mark Wutka wrote:
>I was wondering about this portion of Acts 21:5
>   PANTWN SUN GUNAIXI KAI TEKNOIS
>
>Most of the translations I have seen translate this as something like:
>"All of them, with their wives and children"
>
>I am still a "little Greek", and to me this looks like it could be also
>be translated as "all of them, along with women and children" or maybe
>"including women and children".
>
>It's really the "their" in the translations that I am wondering about.
>Is there something here that indicates possession?  The closest thing I
>can find is that in LSJ (on Perseus), there is one definition of SUN
>that is "of things that belong, or are attached, to a person".
>
>I also tried searching other texts and I see that "SUN GUNAIXI KAI
>TEKNOIS" in two of Josephus' works is translated as "with their wives and
>children" as well.

No, the possessive is not explicitly present in the Greek words;
nevertheless it is surely implicit here. PANTWN is the subject portion of
the genitive absolute PROPEMPONTWN ... PANTWN; presumably all the "men"
(presumably those described as the MAQHTAI in Tyre) escorted the company
out of the city; who else would the women and children belong to other than
to the MAQHTAI? You'll find that often enough the article used with a noun
in the right context implies a "his/her/their" possessive aspect).
-- 

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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