[B-Greek] EN + human locative of sphere

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Mon Jan 8 12:56:40 EST 2007


On Jan 8, 2007, at 12:17 PM, Brian Abasciano wrote:

> Wayne,
>
> The OT is really the main background for this feature of NT thought  
> and theology (in my opinion). So you should look there. I don't  
> have time to look the references up for you, but I would suggest  
> doing a search on the LXX Greek phrases (of course you could go to  
> the Hebrew instead or in addition) for the equivalents of "in you/ 
> me/him/Isaac/Jacob/David" [there is no one for "in Abraham" I  
> believe, though you will find ones referring to Abraham in some of  
> the other references]. Not all of these will be of the type you are  
> looking for, but you should be able to find them easily enough.
>
> God bless!
>
> Brian Abasciano
>
> Responding to:
>
> Would any of you be able to come up with a few examples of EN + a  
> human
> locative of sphere in corpora other than the N.T.? I am trying to  
> find out
> how widespread was usage parallel to EN XRISTW, EN KURIW, etc.  
> outside the
> N.T. corpus. I've tried Perseus but I'm not very good at using that
> resource.

I'm not altogether convinced that this is really a locative at all,  
although it may have roots in locative phrases with preposition EN.  
But I've been somewhat fascinated by the expansion of EN + dative  
phrases in the GNT: we have the clearly instrumental usages (EN  
PNEUMATI hAGIWi) but we have also what seems to me (without having  
made any careful study of it) a not-very-sharp distinction between  
EIS + acc. of the person and EN + dat. of the person; PISTEUW is used  
both ways (as also with EPI + dative of thing or person). There may  
be a semantic distinction between these prepositional usages, but I'm  
not altogether sure about it.

Brian suggests OT LXX phrases are worth exploring and I'm sure that's  
true; I'm wondering whether some of these EN + dative phrases don't  
reflect a Hebrew L' + proper noun or pronoun.

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/





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