[B-Greek] Special use of the dative James 4:17
Piet Huttenga
piet_huttenga at sil.org
Wed Nov 26 10:46:41 EST 2008
After more thinking about this verse, I come to a different conclusion.
The original contribution by Mark Cain had the following interesting remark:
"hAMARTIA AUTWi ESTIN" uses not a true dative in the sense of the
indirect object, but a dative of advantage - disadvantage."
The immediate question arises then what “a true dative in the sense of
the indirect object” is. I see no problem with the use of the dative
here. I think that one would not expect any other case here. The problem
may be in comparing a dative with an indirect object and then conclude
that an indirect object should be in some sense an “object” of a verb.
But the dative is to my mind in the first place a case used for somebody
or something which is on the receiving end and also with certain
prepositions.
I do not know if it is necessary to invent all sorts of new datives of
…. They may be more dependent on the meaning of the noun than on the
construction. “Dative of advantage – disadvantage” does not seem to be
appropriate to me here, but I must admit that I did not go through the
literature to see if anyone has used this term before.
In my former mails I reacted also to the following question he asked:
“Is there a general grammatical rule for the use of EIMI + dative?”
Therefore I came up with the dativus possessoris which has the
construction EIMI + dative.
I admit that the name “possessoris” maybe too restrictive, but the name
has been given and normally a name does not cover all the example which
fall under the category. Some examples may be better qualified as
dativus receptoris (dative of the receiver).
After more thinking I do not think that this may not be completely the
right category for the construction in James 4:17.
I wonder if hAMARTIA should not be considered as a sort of Predicate
Noun referring back to part of the participle construction before.
Then the dative seems to be perfectly natural:
Compare:
It is sin to me. (the fact that "me" (I) is also the Agent, is due to
the fact that "sin" is an event noun)
It is good to me.
“To me” in English is expressed by languages with have a dative by the
dative.
In my language, Dutch, we do have a dative construction in older
expressions and in the pronounse (which have the same form as the
accusative, O I have to go to our neighbours. Compare German: Es ist mir
Wurst. "It does not make any difference to me.” (For people who do not
know any German: Wurst is sausage. The Germans make very good sausages
and also many different kinds of sausages, so the background of this
idiom is not clear to me.). My wife would agree with this statement (all
would she use more refined language). When I discussed this issue with
her, she asked me the rethorical question whether our discussion would
make any difference with regard to the exegesis. I think that you agree
that my answer should be, “no”.
My conclusion is that then the dative is completely natural here, but to
me the interesting point is the relationship between hAMARTIA and what
comes before:
EIDOTI OUN KALON POIEIN KAI MH POIOUNTI hAMARTIA AUTWi ESTIN (James 4:17)
hAMARTIA seems to be almost a Predicate Noun in relation to the whole
EIDOTI ….. POIOUNTI and then especially to MH POIOUNTI.
To the one then who knows to do good and does not do it, it is sin to him.
The question is what is sin to him? The answer is embedded in the
participium construction: MH POIOUNTI. This may be perfectly acceptable
in Greek, but it is strange to me. The subject in the main sentence
could be considered as the predicate noun referring to one of the
conjuncts of a coordinated subordinate relative clause. In my language
such a construction would not be possible. It gives the impression of a
too much condensed construction. (My hesitation can also be the result
of my education. If I remember right one of the Dutch writers complained
that he had gone to school, meaning that at school he learned to obey
grammatical rules in such a way that they restricted him in his freedom
of expression. And I think he has a point here).
Compare the literal:
To the one who knows to do good and does not do it, sin to him is.
I don’t think that it is possible to say this in English. Acceptable to
me would be (at least in Dutch):
If you know that you could do good, but you don’t do it, then you have
committed a sin.
To use “sin” as a sort of predicate noun referring back seems to be to
difficult to express:
Maybe in English this would be possible:
If you do not do good when you could do it, then that is sin.
But it does not seem to be possible to use the same construction as in
Greek. So my question would be whether this is acceptable in Greek and
more examples could be found.
In conclusion for me the dative is not so much the problem here, the
interesting part of this verse is the relation between EIDOTI OUN KALON
POIEIN KAI MH POIOUNTI and hAMARTIA.
I hope I did not make mistakes in the transcription.
For what it is worth.
Piet Huttenga
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