[B-Greek] Dead men move

Carl W.Conrad cwconrad at ioa.com
Mon Apr 25 19:33:52 EDT 2005


On Apr 25, 2005, at 4:22 PM, Mike Sangrey wrote:

> I would like to just verify something.
>
> John 11:44 has:  ECHLQEN hO TEQNHKWS
>
> Given that the participle is in the perfect tense, that means, then,
> that the dead body moved from within the cave to outside the cave--
> right?  That is, that the past action of death resulted in the CURRENT
> state of being dead.
>
> "The dead body came out..."  That's pretty spectacular!

No, I don't think that hO TEQNHKWS means "the dead body" but rather 
"the man who had died." I think the articular participle here is 
equivalent to a substantive clause in the pluperfect indicative. If one 
wanted to say "the corpse/dead body came out," I believe it would be 
EXHLQEN hO NEKROS.

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad at ioa.com
WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/




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