[B-Greek] Rev. 3:12 Pendent Nominative

craig newsgroupstuff at people.net.au
Tue Dec 27 18:54:18 EST 2005


> The first part of Rev.3:12 reads as follows;
> hO NIKWN, POIHSW AUTON STULON EN TWi VAWi TOU QEOU MOU,
> 
> I understand from Wallace's GGBB that this is a case of 
> pendent nominative.

> Bert de Haan.

When I read it (as a novice), it seems to me that the nominative of hO NIKWN
(as with the many other examples of the same in Revelation 2-3), is used for
a kind of emphasis and forceful expression. It seems to draw attention to
this subject, and focus on it. Kind of like putting all caps, underline and
exclamation marks in. Almost functioning like a sub-heading. Is there
another way to do this in standard Greek? It would seem that if other words
were added (like verbs or hOSTIS etc) it would take away from the effect of
force of the presentation.

In English, I might paraphrase like this:

"The one who overcomes (yes, I want to draw your attention to this one, let
him be the object of our thoughts): I will make him..."

However, interesting to compare with 2:7 where the dative is used:

"TW NIKWNTI DWSW AUTW..."

Perhaps in this case the dative TW NIKWNTI is used instead of hO NIKWN
because of the need for a dative by DWSW. This might suggest that the
nominative can be used with the accusative ("hO NIKWN... AUTON") where it
could not with the dative ("hO NIKWN.. AUTW"). It also suggests that the
accusative would not be appropriate to begin the sentence ("TON
NIKWNTA...AUTON").

Does what I say above make any sense, or is it just nonsense? How would I
formally say the above grammatically? Is it just the whole point of the
pendent use of nominative?

--
Craig Johnson
Brisbane, Australia 




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