[B-Greek] TUCON in 1 Cor 16.6

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Sat Sep 25 16:05:08 EDT 2004


At 2:43 PM -0500 9/25/04, Steven Lo Vullo wrote:
>Hi all:
>
>1 Cor 16.6 PROS hUMAS DE TUCON PARAMENW H KAI PARACEIMASW
>
>I'm trying to better understand the function of TUCON. BDAG calls it an
>accusative absolute, referring to B-D-F and Robertson. Other resources
>refer to it as an adverb or adverbial accusative. How should we best
>understand it?
>============

You pays your money and you takes your choice! Unquestionably it is in
origin an accusative absolute, i.e. the neuter accusative of the participle
of an impersonal verb, equivalent to something like EAN TUCHi, "if it turns
out so." On the other hand, it is functioning adverbially, as in fact an
accusative absolute or a genitive absolute would function; I don't know
whether this form is found sufficiently frequently to declare that it has
become a common Hellenistic adverb. One might raise a similar question
about Paul's recurrent usage of MH GENOITO: is it a real optative or has it
become a standard expression of vivid negation? I suppose the question is
whether the accusative absolute is really obsolete or not in Hellenistic
Greek of the NT era; unquestionably it survives in Atticizing literature,
but is it living in standard parlance? Somebody once said something about
the need to realize that NT Koine is a language in flux.
-- 

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/



More information about the B-Greek mailing list