[B-Greek] hO and TH in Gal 2.20b

Daniel Rodriguez dlr09 at earthlink.net
Fri Apr 4 00:21:45 EDT 2008


Dear Greeksters,

I've got a question concerning Gal 2.20b. The NRSV translates, "...And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me." I do not think this depicts the syntax of the text. I think one (actually two) of the keys to understanding this is understanding the hO and TH. How do y'all take it? Based on my short time reading Greek, here's a short syntactical explanation. I would appreaciate all comments.

(hO) DE shows the subject has switched back to EGW as in v19a (Wallace 211). This view takes the HO as masculine nominative as opposed to neuter accusative (from older pronominal forms) like Accordance marks it (BDF 251). NUN modifies the 1st ZW temporally. EN SARXI is a prepositional phrase adjunct to 1st ZW. EN PISTEI is a prepositional phrase adjunct to the 2nd ZW. This creates a small chiastic structure VP+PP//PP+VP. TH is a dative direct object functioning pronominally. It points to the implicit life lived in the verb ZW (BDF 154). I believe this use of TH is evidence for universal grammar, a syntactic phenomena generative grammarians call "empty category" (Haegeman-Gueron 34), which should not be confused with the other phenomena of ellipsis. TOU UIOU TOU QEOU modifies the implicit life lived. The remainder of the verse is a genitive clause which sits in apposition to the genitive clause TOU UIOU TOU QEOU.

Thanks,
Daniel Rodriguez

Haegeman, Liliane and Jacqueline Gueron. English Grammar: A Generative Perspective. Blackwell Publishing: Oxford, 1999.



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