[B-Greek] Antiquities 18.64
Steven Lo Vullo
themelios at charter.net
Mon May 2 19:08:48 EDT 2005
On May 2, 2005, at 4:03 PM, mythictheist at yahoo.com wrote:
> If the following:
>
> "Yet the tribe of the Christians, named after him, has not disappeared
> even to this day"
>
> is a valid translation of:
>
> "eis eti te nun tôn Christianôn apo toude ônomasmenon ouk epelipe to
> phulon"
>
> then can anyone tell me why:
>
> 1) "phulon" is the subject, and why it is at the end of the sentence;
> 2) if "onomasmenon" is in the active voice, then doesn't it need an
> object? (and if so, what is the object);
> 3) what does "epelipe" really mean, and is it context-dependent in
> this situation?
Hi Mike:
1) Greek word order is very flexible, so finding the subject at the end
of a sentence is not really very unusual. It seems to me that there
really is no other candidate in the sentence to qualify as the subject
of EPELIPE.
2) WNOMASMENON is NOT active, but middle/passive, in this case passive,
"called" or "named." It is adjectival and agrees with TO FULON. The
phrase APO TOUDE WNOMASMENON means something like "named from [better
English "after"] this one," with "this one" referring back in the
context to Jesus Christ. Along with TWN CRISTIANWN we get something
like "the tribe of the Christians, so named after this man" (i.e., hO
CRISTOS). You can check the parsing from the text of Josephus at
Perseus:
<http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?
doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0145&layout=&loc=18.64>.
3) Yes, I think the translation has to take into consideration the
context here. Normally translated "leave behind" or "fail," EPILEIPW
with OUK here seems to mean something like "has not become extinct."
They have not "failed" in the sense that they have not gone out of
existence by the time of writing. HTH.
============
Steven Lo Vullo
Madison, WI
MAR student
Trinity Evangelical Divinity School
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