[B-Greek] EIMI with no Predicate Nominative

Albert Pietersma albert.pietersma at sympatico.ca
Sun Oct 12 10:52:13 EDT 2008


On Oct 12, 2008, at 8:59 AM, Carl Conrad wrote:

>
> 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 TRIAKONTAETOUS 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"?
I would read HRIQMHQHSAN hOI LEUITAI as a passive transformation of an  
SVO sentence. The APO phrase would then indicate the manner in which  
they are counted. That is the numbering starts at 30. Alternatively,  
one might read hOI LEUITAI APO TRIAKONTAETOUS  KAI EPANW as a complex  
subject (cf. Iver).
Al

>
>
> Carl W. Conrad
> Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
>
>
>

—
Albert Pietersma PhD
21 Cross Street,
Weston ON Canada M9N 2B8
Email: albert.pietersma at sympatico.ca
Homepage: http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~pietersm




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