[B-Greek] TAUTAS in Acts 1:5
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Sat Feb 25 16:18:01 EST 2006
On Feb 25, 2006, at 2:07 PM, Richard Lindeman wrote:
> Acts 1:5 BAPTISQHSESQE hAGIO OU META POLLAS TAUTAS HMERAS
>
>
>
> What is the antecedent of TAUTAS? Is there an idiom at work here
> in POLLAS TAUTAS HMERAS? Is this an idiomatic way of expressing
> the English “in a few days”?
ATR (Word Pictures): "Not many days hence (OU META POLLAS TAUTAS
hHMERAS). A neat Greek idiom difficult to render smoothly into
English: "Not after many days these." The litotes (not many=few) is
common in Luke (Lu 7:6, 15:13, Ac 17:27, 19:11, 20:12, 21:39, 28:14,
28:2, ). The predicate use of ταυτας (without article) is to be
noted. "These" really means as a starting point, "from
these" (Robertson, Grammar, p. 702). It was ten days hence. This
idiom occurs several times in Luke (Lu 24:21, Ac 24:21, ), as
elsewhere (Joh 4:18, 2Pe 3:1, ). In Lu 2:12 the copula is easily
supplied as it exists in Lu 1:36, 2:2, . "
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/
More information about the B-Greek
mailing list