[B-Greek] ACTS 18:18 TOIS ADELFOIS

CTCE jfs at jfsanders.com
Sat Dec 23 09:44:07 EST 2006


Far be it for me to bring sage advice on this issue, but as a beginner I do need to make some comments.

What I see is two lawyers, one whose client is  PROSMENW  and the other whose client is APOTASSW.  They are presenting briefs attempting to assert their client's right to the dative, TOIS ADELFOIS.

Let me set the stage as I understand it; again, I am in the audience listening to this read.  We have Paul remaining for sufficient days when TOIS ADELFOIS is read.  At this point I do not know what, if anything will follow.  I believe Iver Larsen has established, not legal ownership, but a reasonable expectation that a hearer will immediately associate TOIS ADELFOIS with PROSMEINAS.  If Luke ended the narrative at this point, there would be argument, but he did not end here.  He continued with the word APOTAXAMENOS.  Now the argument goes that this word had so much energy that it ripped the relationship we already established with PROSMEINAS and reestablished that relationship with APOTAXAMENOS.  Now there are some words that have that power, but I do not believe this is one of them.  

Now let us suppose that Luke left out ETI PROSMEINAS hHMERAS hIKANAS.   When he came to TOIS ADELFOIS, we would suspend any connection because we have nothing to assoicate this term with.  But we he now read APOTAXAMENOS we would immediately associate TOIS ADELFOIS with APOTAXAMENOS and we would not have any argument.

I am unaware of any rule in Koine Greek that prevents both of those relationships forming in the sequence narrated.  Especially since both paticiples are connected to the same agent, hO PAULOS. 


So the question I am asking, assuming this is normal discourse, why would we not associate TOIS ADELFOIS with PROSMEINAS before we heard the participle APOTAXAMENOS.

John Sanders
Suzhou, China



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