[B-Greek] Ignatius to the Romans 3:3 MEGEQOUS: what kind of genitive?

Carl Conrad cwconrad2 at mac.com
Sat Feb 6 10:57:50 EST 2010


On Feb 6, 2010, at 10:48 AM, Mark Lightman wrote:
> 
> οὐ πεισμονῆς τὸ ἔργον, ἀλλὰ μεγέθους ἐστὶν ὁ Χριστιανισμός, ὅταν μισῆται ὑπὸ κόσμου.
> ALLA MEGEQOUS ESTIN hO CRISTIANISMOS hOTAN MISHTAI hUPO KOSMOU
> “Christianity is greatest when it is hated by the world.” (Holmes)
> Normally, I’m not a big fan of these “what kind of genitive is that” questions, but I really don’t get the syntax here.  BDAG 2 translates “Christianity is (truly) great” but does not explain the genitive. The closest I could find in Smyth is 1320 “Genitive of Quality” (“Christianity is of the quality of greatness when it is hated?”) but the examples Smyth gives make more sense than this passage.
>  αντιλαβου μου παρακαλω. ANTILABOU MOU PARAKALW.

Whatever you want to call it, it is qualitative, "... is a thing of magnitude," "is a very big thing." Some might call this a "predicate genitive," inasmuch as it functions much as does an adjective with the copulative verb ESTIN.




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






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