[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/




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