[B-Greek] Matthew 17:3

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Tue Jan 9 06:48:33 EST 2007


On Jan 9, 2007, at 3:41 AM, A. J. Birch wrote:

> Matthew 17:3: "KAI IDOU WFQH AUTOIS MWUSHS KAI HLIAS SULLALOUNTES MET'
> AUTOU."
>
> I understand that "WFQH" is singular because 'attracted' to the  
> first of the
> two (proper) nouns that go with it, but then "SULLALOUNTES" is  
> plural. Is
> this (i. e. a main verb and a qualifying participle not agreeing  
> with it in
> number) fairly common? Can any of you give any other NT examples of  
> this?

I think this is pretty clearly a simple case of what is termed  
"constructio ad sensum" where the logical relationship of elements  
prevails over a grammatical rule. See Smyth §926a. I don't find in  
the sections of Smyth referred to there anything comparable to the  
instance above, but BDF§135 ("Agreement with two or more co-ordinate  
words §135. Connected by KAI {H)/}" but I don't see anything there  
that's quite like Mt 17:3. On the other hand the verb would surely be  
WFQHSAN if it followed HLIAS and the logic of the concord is  
transparent.


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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