[B-Greek] Philippians 3:5 Dative of Respect replacing Accusative of Respect
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at ioa.com
Fri Oct 21 13:45:01 EDT 2005
On Oct 21, 2005, at 11:53 AM, David Bielby wrote:
> As I’m working on my exegesis for Philippians this month, I have
> noticed
> several times Zerwick refers to the Dative of Respect replacing the
> Accusative of Respect. For example, in Philippians 3:5 we have one of
> these…
>
> “PERITOMHi OKTAHMEROS, EK GENOUS ISRAEL, FULHS BENIAMIN,….
>
> My questions are: Does the use of dative of respect in place of
> accusative
> of respect come from Hebraic influence, or was it the general
> thrust of 1st
> Century common Greek? Also, what is the exact significance of this
> subtlety? In other words, why does Zerwick bring it to our attention?
I can't judge why Zerwick feels the need to take note of this --
perhaps for
no reason other than to call attention to the equivalency of expression,
but in fact the dative of respect is perfectly standard in Classical
Attic. cf.
Smyth §1516 with examples such as ANHR hHLIKIAi ETI NEOS and THi
FWNHi TRACUS and ASQENHS TWi SWMATI. §1516a. says "The accusative
of respect (§1600) is often nearly equivalent to the dative of respect."
Regarding Accusative of Respect, Smyths says (§1600): "To verbs
denoting a
state, and to adjectives, an accusative may be added to denote a
thing in
respect to which the verb or adjective is limited." Then in §1603, he
adds,
"For the accusative of respoect the instrumental dative (§1516) is
also employed,
and also the prepositions EIS, KATA, PRO0S, e.g. DIAFEREIN ARETHi or
EIS ARETHN."
In sum, I think it's mistaken to say that either construction
"replaces the other."
I think rather that they are simply equivalent expressions, without
an ounce of
difference, subtle or otherwise.
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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