[B-Greek] Phillipians 2:6 - controlling verb?

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Fri Aug 11 10:34:19 EDT 2006


On Aug 11, 2006, at 9:31 AM, William Ross wrote:

> Is there a controlling verb for hUPARCWN in Phillipians 2:6?


It helps to have the whole of the relevant text:

... EN CRISTWi IHSOU, hOS EN MORFHi QEOU hUPARCWN, OUC hARPAGMON  
hHGHSATO TO EINAI ISA QEWi ...

I think the syntax of the clause in which hUPARCWN appears is  
reasonably simple:

hOS (with CRISTWi IHSOU as antecedent) is the subject, hHGHSATO the  
verb of the clause; hUPARCWN is nom. sg. masc. ptc. in agreement with  
hOS and adverbially qualifying the verb hHGHSATO. The verb hUPARCW is  
more or less synonymous with EIMI, "be."

cf. BDAG s.v. 2: " to be in a state or circumstance, be as a widely  
used substitute in H. Gk. for EINAI, but in some of the foll. pass.  
the sense ‘be inherently (so)’ or ‘be really’ cannot be excluded ... "

Of course, there are several OTHER problems in this text, but the  
grammatical function of hUPARCWN is not one.

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad2 at mac.com
WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/





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