[B-Greek] John 15:9 - Use of Dative

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at ioa.com
Fri Jun 10 06:27:24 EDT 2005


On Jun 10, 2005, at 12:26 AM, Richard Ghilardi wrote:

> Hi Folks,
>
> Carl Conrad wrote:
>
>
>> I don't think there's a great deal of difference in MEANING between
>> EN THi AGAPHi MOU
>> and EN THi AGAPHi THi EMHi but I personally think that THi EMHi is
>> more emphatic than
>> would a simple genitive MOU. But it could as well have been EN THi
>> EMHi AGAPHi -- and I think
>> that would have been the simpler and closer equivalent of EN THi
>> AGAPHi MOU.
>>
>
> This is my feeling too. BUT...
>
> One of the textbooks from which I learned Greek, Hansen and Quinn's
> "Greek: An Intensive Course", writes:
>
> << When the article is repeated and the words in the attributive  
> position
> follow it, greater emphasis is placed on the NOUN [caps are mine], and
> the words in the attributive position seem to come as an  
> afterthought. >>
>
> They provide the following phrases:
>
> hOI EN THi CWRAi ADELFOI
>
> hOI ADELFOI hOI EN THi CWRAi
>
> and write:
>
> << To translate the last example given above as "the brothers, [I  
> mean]
> the ones in the country," would be to exaggerate the effect, but it  
> gives
> some idea of the difference between the two. >>
>
> Now, I realize that they are not specifically discussing the  
> pronominal
> adjective, but the same principle ought apply to it. I also understand
> that H & Q are writing of classical Attic Greek and not the KOINH. But
> surely this is not one of those features which distinguishes the  
> two, is
> it?
>
> Or perhaps some of the linguistic ideas of which Mr. Buth has recently
> been writing can be brought in here, such as Topicalization?, to
> explicate the difference in phrasing.
>
> At any rate, my question is: Is the pronominal adjective in the  
> phrase EN
> THi AGAPHi THi EMHi really emphatic or is it quite de-emphatic, an
> "afterthought" as H & Q say?

Thanks for this note, Richard (and I appreciate the fact that you  
have the
same sense of the emphasis upon THi EMHi as I do, even contrary to
what Hansen and Quinn assert. I really can't believe that the appendage
"(I mean) the ones in the country" is "de-emphatic." I think that  
when the
speaker/writer appends information like this that DISTINGUISHES the
preceding noun-referent from another or other potential referents, then
the distinguishing item is being highlighted. A very common classical  
Attic
idiomatic phrase is ALL- TE KAI "X": e.g. ALLOI TE KAI BRASIDAS (Thuc.
is speaking of notable generals in the war) -- the force of this is  
"especially
Brasidas"; likewise there's the adverbial form ALLWS TE KAI (hOUTWS) --
the force of which is "in other ways and (especially) in THIS way". I  
think
there's something similar in the usage of hOI ADELFOI hOI EN THi CWRAi:
maybe there's a difference between a restrictive and descriptive usage:
restrictive in the sense: "NOT any other brothers, but THE ONES in the
country" as opposed to descriptive: "the brothers who were/are in the
country."

This may ultimately be a matter of judgment. Poetry is distinct from  
prose,
of course, but my doctoral research was on poetic word-order, and one
of my earliest discoveries was that the standard pattern of  
"Sperrung" --
separation of noun and modifier -- is placement of an adjective before
the central caesura so that it agrees with a noun at the end of the
hexameter line--that's pretty common, but what is rarer and seems to
lay far more emphasis upon the adjective is the pattern with noun before
the central caesura and corresponding adjective at the line-end.

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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