[B-Greek] Adjectival and Adverbial Prepositional Phrases in Biblical Greek
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad2 at mac.com
Tue May 17 14:11:03 EDT 2005
On Tuesday, May 17, 2005, at 01:26PM, James Davis <jamesdavis at focusonthescriptures.com> wrote:
>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?
Quite frankly I can't make any sense of this: "after looking at them with leprosy?" META LEPRAS ought in this instance to characterize PERIBLEYAMENOS but I cannot imagine what "ogling with leprosy" could conceivably mean. Where did you get this text?
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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