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

George F Somsel gfsomsel at yahoo.com
Fri Aug 25 10:20:41 EDT 2006


Text
  
  PROSDEXOMENOI THN MAKARIAN ELPIDA KAI EPIFANEIAN THS DOCHS TOU MEGALOU QEOU KAI SWTHROS hHMWN IHSOU XRISTOU
   
  I must confess that you have me puzzled in several respects.  
   
  1.  What does Tit 2.13 have to do with Re 12.14?
  2.  Does your comment regarding "the appearance of the glory" have some connection to your other comments?  These seem to be separate concerns.
  3.  By what logic do you conclude that Sharp's rule does not apply?  Because you conceive of "The Great God" as a title?  The exception to Sharp's rule, to the best of my knowledge does not include titles but only proper names.
   
  I refer you to Justin Martyr's First Apology 61 where he states
   
  EP' ONOMATOS TOU PATROS TWN hOLWN KAI DESPOTOU QEOU KAI TOU SWTHROS hHMWN IHS. XT. KAI TOU PNEUMATOS
   
  Note that here "the Father of all things" could equally be taken as a title yet DESPOTOU QEOU clearly refers to the same.  On the other hand, TOU SWTHROS hHMWN has its own article and therefore is not to be identified with PATROS TWN hOLWN.  The same is true with regard to TOU PNEUMATOS.  It should also be noted that SWTHR KAI QEOS was a term used with regard to Ptolemy I.  It would be unthinkable to say regarding this usage that it designated two separate individuals.
   
  There is another problem with what you wrote -- or rather two problems:
  1. Paul's Greek was not perfect.
  2. It is dubious that Paul was the author of Titus.
  
________
   
  
William Ross <woundedegomusic at gmail.com> wrote:
  This question was not addressed. I also would like to know how this
conclusion was reached as it does not at all appear correct to me. I would
think that Paul is referring to "the appearance of the glory" for several
reasons:

* Paul uses the adjectival form many times, so he is not thinking Hebrew
about the correct way to be adjectival
* in other places, Paul uses the noun form exclusively as a noun, as far as
I can see.
* Paul's greek is perfect as he was a highly literate, natural born greek
speaker and only employs "semitisms" when he is quoting the LXX (which are
then technically "septuagintisms" I should think)
* the context is his contrasting the appearance of [the time of] "god's
favor" in the preceding verse with the appearance of "glory"

Am I mistaken on any of these points?

Also, if "the Great God" is conceived of as a title that would only apply to
the one true god, would this then indicate that Sharp's Rule does not apply?
In effect, doesn't the appearance of the definite article "clash" with
hHMWN?

I apologize in advance if these questions are stupid and ignorant.

Thanks,

William Ross
VGB, Argentina




On 8/15/06, Jason Hare wrote:
>
> Carl,
>
> This is a bit off-topic of the present discussion (attributive v.
> predicate
> position and article-noun linkage), but I was just wondering -- since you
> mentioned that THS DOXHS ôçò äïîçò is functioning adjectivally in Titus
> 2:13
> -- if this is a semiticism.
>
> In other words, do you think that Paul was using something similar to the
> Hebrew construct phrase? Or it a natural feature of the Greek language to
> link two nouns together (using the genitive in the second) to express a
> adjectival relationship?
>
> Best regards,
> Jason
>
>
> On 8/15/06, Carl W. Conrad wrote:
> >
> >
> > 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/
> >
> >
> > ---
> > B-Greek home page: http://metalab.unc.edu/bgreek
> > B-Greek mailing list
> > B-Greek at lists.ibiblio.org
> > http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-greek
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Jason A. Hare
> jaihare at gmail.com
> Joplin, Missouri (USA)
> ---
> B-Greek home page: http://metalab.unc.edu/bgreek
> B-Greek mailing list
> B-Greek at lists.ibiblio.org
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-greek
>



-- 

William Ross
VGB, Argentina
---
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george
gfsomsel
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