[B-Greek] Col1:6,9: AF hHS hHMERAS OFFLIST

Martin Culy MCuly at briercrest.ca
Thu Apr 5 20:59:45 EDT 2007


Stephen,

The construction you refer to in these two verses is a good example of what
linguists call internally-headed relative clauses.  These are very rare in
the languages of the world, but there are quite a number of examples in the
NT.  I dealt with this construction in a Masters thesis back in the 1980s.
In internally-headed relative clauses, the head noun or antecedent (here,
hHMERAS) is actually inside the relative clause that modifies it, though it
gets its case from the main clause (here, the preposition APO).  In my Acts:
A Handbook on the Greek Text (co-authored with Mikeal Parsons) we propose
that "IHRCs" may serve to intensify the expression.  In Col 1 the semantics
would be something like, "from the VERY day."  It is possible, though, that
IHRCs are simply idiomatic in nature.  At any rate, it is not appropriate to
view them as examples of attraction, which seems to merely be a stylistic
device with no pragmatic function.  

Hope this is helpful.  If you would like, we can chat further about the
construction next week when I am back in the office.

Grace and peace,

Martin Culy
Associate Professor of New Testament and Greek
Briercrest College and Seminary
Editor, Baylor Handbook on the Greek New Testament

_____________________________________________
Stephen wrote:

Ladies and Gentlemen:
I was wondering whether anyone could provide some information or references 
on the above construction.
Zerwick/Grosvenor (GAGNT) say that it is a shortened form of
APO THS hHMERAS hHi
and provide no further information.

Murray Harris says that it is an idiomatic form of AF hHMERAS hHi where the 
dative singular rel. pronoun hHi has been attracted to the case of its 
antecedent and the result of that in turn transferred to the relative 
clause.
This is at least an explanation of sorts but leaves one thirsting for more.

There seems to be an awful lot of attraction going on -- and being 
morphologically-minded, I'd like to know more. If there's anything out there

that will shed more light on attraction in general (err in a linguistic 
context :-)), I'd be curious to read more...

Thanks
Stephen Baldwin
stbaldwi at hotmail.com

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