[B-Greek] EIMI with no Predicate Nominative
Carl Conrad
cwconrad2 at mac.com
Sun Oct 12 08:59:04 EDT 2008
On Oct 11, 2008, at 9:44 PM, Albert Pietersma wrote:
>
> On Oct 11, 2008, at 7:39 PM, Carl Conrad wrote:
>
>>
>> 1 Chron 23:3 reads καὶ ἠριθμήθησαν οἱ
>> Λευῖται ἀπὸ τριακονταετοῦς καὶ
>> ἐπάνω [KAI HRIQMHQHSAN hOI LEUITAI APO TRIAKONTAETOUS KAI
>> EPANW]: "The Levites were numbered/counted from 30-year-old and
>> upwards" -- meaning, evidently, that those younger than 30 years
>> old were not counted in the tally. Looking now at verse 27, we see
>> ὅτι ἐν τοῖς λόγοις Δαυιδ τοῖς
>> ἐσχάτοις ἐστὶν ὁ ἀριθμὸς υἱῶν
>> Λευι ἀπὸ εἰκοσαετοῦς καὶ ἐπάνω
>> [hOTI EN TOIS LOGOIS DAUID TOIS ESCATOIS ESTIN hO ARIQMOS hUIWN
>> LEUI APO EIKOSAETOUS KAI EPANW], and in the context of the larger
>> unit, we recognize that ARIQMOS hUIWN LEUI ESTIN must be equivalent
>> to HRIQHMHQHSAN hOI LEUITAI: "The tally of the Levites/sons of Levi
>> is ... " = "The Levites were counted ... " The construction of
>> verse 27 is more complicated than I thought when i first looked at
>> it without considering its larger context. The phrase APO
>> EKOSAETOUS KAI EPANW in verse 27 is predicative with ESTIN, while
>> the phrase EN TOIS LOGOIS DAUID TOIS ESCATOIS is adverbial to the
>> whole clause, explaining WHERE, or WITH REFERENCE TO WHAT, "the
>> tally of the sons of Levi is 'from 20-years-old and upwards'". I
>> don't think this is a standard Greek construction, probably it's
>> what Al Pietersma understands as "interlinear" style of literal
>> translation from the Hebrew. Let's ask his opinion. I may be all
>> wet on this, but I think ordinary Greek prose would have used a
>> predicate genitive with ESTIN here; perhaps the APO EKOSAETOUS KAI
>> EPANW repreents a partitive expression, but in any case, the phrse
>> is predicative with ESTIN.
> While 1 Chron 23:3 is literal and largely isomorphic (morpheme-for-
> morpheme) and as such is compatible with interlinearity, I am not
> sure that one needs to invoke interlinearity to account for the
> Greek text. That is to say, though an item like TRIAKONTAETOUS might
> have been rendered more literally, it is more difficult to point to
> any given item that violates Greek code.
> I would read APO EKOSAETOUS KAI EPANW not as an adjectival but
> rather as an adverbial. That is to say, it tells us where/at what
> point the counting started rather than who are being counted.
If it's adverbial, then are we to understand ARIQMOS ESTIN as
equivalent of HRIQMHQHSAN -- i.e., ARIQMOS entails a verbal expression
of some sort, e.g., "there is an enumeration (tallied) from 30 and up"?
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
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