[B-Greek] Two Greek expressions in Luke 2

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Wed Jun 6 08:10:44 EDT 2007


On Jun 6, 2007, at 7:40 AM, Jonathan Robie wrote:

> I guess it's obvious to people that I'm working through Luke ;->

It's a good thing to do; in fact, it's a good thing to read through  
any document (GNT or other) rather than deal with snippets.

> According to Zerwick, KAT ETOS (κατ ἔτος, used in Luke 2:41)  
> means "every year", and occurs only here in the GNT. Can KAT also  
> be combined with other time frames, e.g. KAT hHMERAS (κατ  
> ἡμέρας)? Is it any particular kind of Greek, e.g.  
> particularly educated or regional, or why doesn't this common  
> phrase occur in the GNT?

It's pretty standard Greek. Here's BDAG s.v. KATA 2.c.

	c. distributively (cp. 1d): x period by x period: KAT' ETOS every  
year (s. ETOS) Lk 2:41. Also KAT' ENIAUTON (s. ENIAUTOS 1) Hb 9:25;  
10:1, 3.KAQ' hHMERAN daily, every day (s. hHMERA 2c) Mt 26:55; Mk  
14:49; Lk 16:19; 22:53; Ac 2:46f; 3:2; 16:5; 17:11; 19:9; 1 Cor  
15:31; Hb 7:27; 10:11. AlsoO KAQ' hHMERAN (s. hHMERA 2c) Lk 11:3;  
19:47; Ac 17:11 v.l. hH EPISTASIS hH KAQ' hHMERAN (s. EPISTASIS) 2  
Cor 11:28. KATA PASAN hHMERAN every day (Jos., Ant. 6, 49) Ac 17:7.  
Also KAQ' hEKASTHN hHMERAN (s. hHMERA 2c) Hb 3:13. KATA MIAN  
SABBATOUυ on the first day of every week 1 Cor 16:2. KATA PAN  
SABBATON every Sabbath Ac 13:27; 15:21b; 18:4. KATA MHNA hEKASTON  
each month Rv 22:2 (κ. μῆνα as SIG 153, 65; POxy 275, 18; 2 Macc  
6:7). KATA hEORTHNν at each festival Mt 27:15; Mk 15:6.

And, for what it's worth, the derivative adjective KAQHMERINOS means  
"daily."

> Also, in Luke 2:44, the phrase HLQON hHMERAS hODON (ἦλθον  
> ἡμέρας ὁδὸν) makes perfect sense to me as long as I  
> don't try to think about it analytically, but when I do, hHMERAS  
> and hODON both look like nouns to me, and are tagged as such in the  
> version of Tauber's morphologically tagged GNT that I'm looking at.  
> Should I think of this as a fixed expression, or is there a way  
> that nouns like these combine that I don't grok yet?

They are both nouns and rightly tagged. One of the tricks I long ago  
found useful with adnominal (adjectival) genitives -- although it  
won't work in every instance -- is to create an English expression  
with the genitive word followed by a hyphen and then the noun upon  
which the genitive is dependent. In this instance it's "a day- 
journey." But often just using an equivalent "possessive" English  
expression works too, as "a day's journey" or "journey of a day."  
What is perhaps more useful is using this methodology (when you don't  
understand an adnominal genitive expresion intuitively and so must  
analyze it) is that it let's you become aware of how the Greek phrase  
actually works, so that you don't need to think through Wallace's  
'leventy-leven' categories of adnominal genitive (subjective,  
objective, plenary, descriptive, etc., etc.). The adnominal genitive  
is not a semantic structure but an indicator of relationship between  
the two nouns wherein the genitive noun is functioning adjectivally  
to qualify the other noun. Think of expressions like "love's labor,"  
"fool's gold," "cat's paw," "love of life" (a life-long love? or a  
passion to live?); you have to think through these things as you meet  
them if you don't discern them immediately, but it's usually no great  
chore. What Wallace in GGBB attempts to do is to turn all that  
guesswork into some sort of algorithm -- and I really think that's  
superfluous.

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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