[B-Greek] Ajectival and Adverbial Prepositional Phrases in Biblical Greek
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at ioa.com
Sat May 14 20:58:07 EDT 2005
On May 14, 2005, at 8:01 PM, James Davis wrote:
> I will try to clarify my earlier question regarding NT Greek
> adjectival and adverbial phrases.
>
> Earlier I asked a question regarding the following two sentences
> that were proposed for consideration by James Tauber: 'I saw the
> man with my binoculars' and 'I saw the man with my hat. My
> question was: can 'with my hat' and 'with my binoculars' be
> expressed in NT Greek as META + a genitive characterizing a noun,
> the object of a verb? If yes, the next question is: suppose the
> noun 'man' in each phrase were replaced with the pronoun him, could
> the prepositional phrase META + a genitive then characterize the
> pronoun. I would appeciate, very much, your comments.
>
> My next question concerns Luke 24:30: KAI EGENETO EN-TW-
> KATAKLIQHNAI AUTON MET' AUTWN, LABWN TON ARTON... One interlinear
> translation translates this as: "And it came to pass as reclined he
> with them, having taken the bread"...
>
> Wallace says: "Basic uses of META With Genitive a. Association/
> Accompaniment: with, in company with."
>
> He or him with them. My question is: Does MET' AUTWN characterize
> the pronoun AUTON? Again, I would be most grateful for your comments.
No, MET' AUTWN does NOT construe with AUTON; AUTON is the accusative
subject of the articular infinitive KATAKLIQHNAI; MET' AUTWN
construes with KATAKLIQHNAI.
I get the impression that you're taking your cue from the word-order
of the interlinear. Interlinears are somewhat notorious for creating
misconceptions about the construction of the Greek; unless one
already has a pretty strong grounding in the language being
translated in the interlinear version, this sort of translation which
attempts literal English equivalents of the Greek is misleading: the
"he" of "as reclined he with them" is actually AUTON, the subject of
the infinitive. Once again--as is almost always the case--the META +
genitive prepositional phrase turns out to be adverbial, and in this
instance it qualifies the verb.
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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