[B-Greek] Adjectival and Adverbial Prepositional Phrases in Biblical Greek

James Davis jamesdavis at focusonthescriptures.com
Tue May 17 13:26:15 EDT 2005


On Mon, 16 May 2005 15:15:38 -0400  "Carl W. Conrad" <cwconrad2 at mac.com> wrote responding to the questions I raised 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 questions were: 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.

And the answer is: NO, these expressions can NOT be expressed in NT Greek as META + genitive--at least not simply. If the sentence means "I saw a man holding my binoculars" It would be EIDON ANQRWPON (ANDRA) ECONTA ... + acc.); if the sentence means "I saw a man by using my binoculars," it would be EIDON ANQRWPON/ANDRA TOIS (binoculars) MOU -- i.e. one would use an instrumental dative, not META + genitive. Presumably "I saw the man with my hat" is to be understood as "I saw the man wearing my hat" -- in Greek that would normally be TON ANQRWPON/ANDRA EIDON ECONTA THi KEFALHi ("hat") in acc. Obviously I don't have equivalent words for "binoculars" and "hat" in Koine Greek, but that's the grammar and idiom that would ordinarily apply. 

The next questions are therefore inapplicable.

Carl, thank you very much for your answer. This old man is learning a little.

Now let me propose a sentence: KAI PERIBLEYAMENOS AUTOUS META LEPRAS. And my next question is: Would META LEPRAS characterize PERIBLEYAMENOS or AUTOUS?

James Davis 
jdavis at focusonthescriptures.com
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