[B-Greek] Titus 2:13 / Revelation 12:14

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Tue Aug 15 05:56:12 EDT 2006


On Aug 14, 2006, at 9:50 PM, Jason Kerrigan wrote:

> Revelation 12:14: TOU AETOU TOU MEGALOU, reads, "great eagle."  
> Likewise I have bellieved that: THS DOXHS TOU MEGALOU in Titus 2:13  
> would read, "Great Glory." Can anyone shed some light on why  
> MEGALOU would be descriptive of the antecedent noun in Revelation  
> 12:14 but not in Titus 2:13? I am open to correction.

Jason, this is Greek 101, lesson 3 or 4: positions of the article in  
relation to adjective and noun when all are in agreement as to  
number, gender, and case:

Standard Attributive position: TO MEGA BIBLION: "the big book" --  
(article, adjective, and noun are all neuter singular; the adjective  
is "sandwiched" between the article and the noun)
Alternative Attributive position TO BIBLION TO MEGA: "the big book"  
or "the book, the big (one)" -- the article-noun group is followed by  
a repeated article and adjective agreeing with the noun; the function  
of the repeated article here is to reference the immediately  
preceding noun and relate the adjective to that preceding noun; this  
is very similar to apposition of "the book" and "the big one" and it  
is also very similar to a relative clause with ellipsis of the verb:  
"the book which (is) big."

Note that in both these constructions the adjective is "embraced" by  
the article which, like the adjective,  has the same number, gender,  
and case as the noun.

Different from the above are versions of the Predicate position:

MEGA TO BIBLION, TO BIBLION MEGA -- in both these formulations the  
verb "be" is in ellipsis (that's standard Greek practice). Both  
formulations mean "The book is big."

The formulation in Rev 12:14 is what I have above called the  
"Alternative attributive position": TOU AETOU TOU MEGALOU is the  
genitive-case form of "the eagle, the big (one)" or identical in  
meaning to "the big eagle."

But in Titus 2:13 you're isolating elements that belong together  
grammatically  () and linking elements that don't belong together  
grammatically

PROSDECOMENOI THN MAKARIAN ELPIDA KAI EPIFANEIAN THS DOXHS TOU  
MEGALOU QEOU KAI SWTHROS hHMWN IHSOU CRISTOU ...
lit. "awaiting the happy expectation and appearing of the glory of  
our great God and savior Jesus Christ ... "

THS DOXHS is genitive singular feminine dependent upon the preceding  
noun EPIFANEIAN (here functioning as if it were an adjective: "of  
glory" = "glorious), but TOU MEGALOU QEOU KAI SWTHROS hHMWN is  
genitive singular masculine dependent upon the preceding noun  
EPIFANEIAN: "appearing of our great God and saviior."

In sum, you could not at all view the relationship between TOU AETOU  
TOU MEGALOU and THS DOXHS TOU MEGALOU as comparable if you really  
understood something that is very basic to ancient Greek syntax. You  
have focused upon the superficial fact that the phrases you've cited  
from Rev 12:14 and Titus 2:13 each consist of a genitive article and  
genitive noun followed by another genitive article followed by  
another genitive form in agreement with the article -- but you have  
failed to see the syntactic relationship of the elements in the  
larger group and have actually isolated THS DOXHS TOU MEGALOU from  
the larger syntactic group in which it belongs.

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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