[B-Greek] John 1:47 ALHQWS

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at ioa.com
Tue Jun 14 06:43:43 EDT 2005


On Jun 14, 2005, at 4:47 AM, D Jongkind wrote:

> John 1:47
> IDE ALHQWS ISRAHLITHS EN W DOLOS OUK ESTIN
>
> To what extent can adverbs as ALHQWS take on adjectival qualities?  
> Some translations render this as 'a true Israelite' but it seems to  
> me rather uncommon to take an adverb in the sense of an adjective.  
> I checked BDF343 but I see some difference with the case in hand:  
> here the adverb is derived from an adjective.
> Could somebody shed some light?.

An interesting question, Dirk. After a bit of reflection, I rather  
think ALHQWS is adverbial and construes with an implicit verb: ESTIN  
would be a pretty good candidate, I think, especially since we have  
the rare active imperative IDE instead of IDOU, which is more common:  
"Take note! Here's an israelite in the authentic sense (rightly so- 
called) ..." I do think that a verb must be implicit here and  
something like a hOUTOS also. On the other hand, I suppose it could  
be argued that ISRAHLITHS is generic and functioning more like a  
predicate adjective: "Here's an Israelite, one rightly so-called."

That, as I say, is after a bit of reflection; I'd like to hear other  
views on this question.


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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