[B-Greek] Accusative of retained object

Elizabeth Kline kline_dekooning at earthlink.net
Mon May 21 17:14:48 EDT 2007


One more try:

ROM. 3:1 TI OUN TO PERISSON TOU IOUDAIOU H TIS hH WFELEIA THS
PERITOMHS;  2 POLU KATA PANTA TROPON. PRWTON MEN [GAR] hOTI
EPISTEUQHSAN TA LOGIA TOU QEOU.


PISTEW (BDAG 818 #3) "entrust something to someone" in the active can  
take three arguments (Lk 16:11b), a nominative, an accusative and a  
dative. The equivalent when found in the passive may have the dative  
"transformed" into an accusative and may retain the accusative  
"object". G.Cooper (1.52.4.2,6) doesn't read this "retained"  
accusative as an object of the passive verb. He suggests that the  
accusative here is functioning as an adverbial.

In Rom 3:2b the subject of EPISTEUQHSAN is not specified since it can  
be supplied from the preceding verse (TOU IOUDAIOU). The "retained"  
accusative is TA LOGIA. The question under consideration is why do we  
find an accusative (direct object??) with passive verb. Carl's  
suggests that we read EPISTEUQHSAN as a middle which can take a  
direct object. G.Cooper reads EPISTEUQHSAN as a passive and the  
"retained" accusative as a functional adverbial.

Another question worth pondering. If this was an active construction,  
how would the subject slot for PISTEW be filled? Is the motivation  
for putting this in the passive voice to suppress the notion of  
agency? Another way of framing the question, is EPISTEUQHSAN a  
"divine passive"?

If we read EPISTEUQHSAN as a middle, do these questions become moot?


Elizabeth Kline


On May 21, 2007, at 1:10 PM, Elizabeth Kline wrote:

>
> On May 21, 2007, at 1:01 PM, Elizabeth Kline wrote:
>
>> ROM. 3:1 TI OUN TO PERISSON TOU IOUDAIOU H TIS hH WFELEIA THS
>> PERITOMHS;  2 POLU KATA PANTA TROPON. PRWTON MEN [GAR] hOTI
>> EPISTEUQHSAN TA LOGIA TOU QEOU.
>>
>> PISTEW (BDAG 818 #3) "entrust something to someone" in the active can
>> take three arguments (Lk 16:11b), a nominative, an accusative and a
>> dative. The equivalent when found in the passive may have the dative
>> "transformed" into an accusative. G.Cooper (1.52.4.2,6) doesn't read
>> this accusative as an object of the passive verb. He suggests that
>> the accusative here is functioning as an adverbial. Carl will
>> probably disagree with this analysis.
>
>
> Reading this over again, I can see now that the transformation of the
> person dative in the active to the accusative in the passive doesn't
> apply to the text under consideration. Since the person(s) is not
> explicitly specified in Rom. 3:2b.

Elizabeth Kline







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