[B-Greek] Rev. 3:12 Pendent Nominative
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad2 at mac.com
Tue Dec 27 19:17:38 EST 2005
On Tuesday, December 27, 2005, at 06:54PM, craig <newsgroupstuff at people.net.au> wrote:
>> 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?
Frankly I think that the original expression in 3:12 would have been more "grammatically" phrased: TON NIKWNTA POIHSW STULON, in which case the AUTON would be superfluous; so in 2:17 it ought rather to be TWi NIKWNTI DWSW (without any added AUTWi). I think it is probable that Semitic thinking underlies the construction of the Greek in these passages.
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad2 at mac.com
WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/
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