[B-Greek] Genitive Absolute?

Richard Ghilardi qodeshlayhvh at juno.com
Sun Apr 17 21:49:47 EDT 2005


Hello Folks,

ANDROS D' EPEIDAN hAIM' ANASPASHi KONIS
hAPAX QANONTOS, OUTIS EST' ANASTASIS

Aeschylus, Eumenides (spoken by the god Apollo)

I know this is not Biblical or even Hellenistic Greek and if Carlton and
Carl decide that all responses should be offlist to me privately, so be
it. Here are my 4 questions:

1) Can the words ANDROS... hAPAX QANONTOS be construed as a genitive
ablsolute or must they be taken as an adnominal genitive specifying the
head noun hAIM'?

2) In this present general condition do we have a double protasis: man is
dead; dust soaks up blood or a single complex protasis: dust soaks up
dead man's blood?

3) If the words ANDROS... hAPAX QANONTOS are removed (as they could be if
they were an absolute construction), can the remainder of the sentence
stand by itself and make tolerable sense: EPEIDAN hAIM' ANASPASHi KONIS,
OUTIS EST' ANASTASIS? Does spilt blood generally signify death?

4) Could this sentence be rewritten with two gen. abs. in the protasis as
follows: ANDROS D' hAPAX QANONTOS KAI hAIM' AUTOU ANASPASASHS KONEWS,
OUTIS EST' ANASTASIS? In this case is the AUTOU needed?

I would English it as,

Once a man is dead and the dust soaks up the blood,
there is no resurrection.

Here's Herbert Weir Smyth's translation:

But when the dust has drawn up the blood of a man, once he is dead, there
is no return to life.

My translation does not seem to differ substantially from Smyth's. I have
simply used parataxis where the Greek uses hypotaxis since the English
language prefers the former.

Finally, I'm only interested in the grammar and syntax of this sentence,
not in any theological viewpoint that it may contain. So please restrict
your replies to what the Greek grammar and syntax may legitimately be
taken to mean.

Yours in His grace,

Richard Ghilardi - qodeshlayhvh at juno.com
New Haven, Connecticut USA


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