[B-Greek] Matthew 1:20

Michael Aubrey mga318 at yahoo.com
Sun Nov 28 17:37:55 EST 2010


hAGION cannot modify GENNHQEN because of the intervening preposition. While 
discontinuous phrases are allow in Greek, there are strict limits on the form 
they take. In the case of prepositional phrases, you are only going to find two 
patterns:

Preposition -> Adjective -> X -> Noun
Preposition -> Noun -> X -> Adjective 

Discontinuous constituency like this arises with the author/speaker viewed the 
first part of the discontinuity as particularly important or relevant to the 
message.

The only occasions where a word that is functionally in a prepositional phrase 
can appear before the preposition are in Poetry, though even then, I can only 
say that for Classical poetry. I haven't looked at Hellenistic poetry. Also, in 
Homeric Greek, there is significantly more freedom in the placement of 
prepositions, but such phenomena are not relevant to what we're seeing here.

If you're willing to push through some rather technical discussion, I've done 
some writing on the subject of discontinuous phrases in Greek, specifically 
looking at the Hellenistic period:

http://evepheso.wordpress.com/studies-in-greek-syntax/

Mike Aubrey
http://evepheso.wordpress.com


________________________________
From: Dony K. Donev <dony at cupandcross.com>
To: Biblical Greek' <b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Sun, November 28, 2010 2:18:49 PM
Subject: [B-Greek] Matthew 1:20

Does hAGION refer to the Spirit OR the begotten, since both are neuter singular?
If it refers to the Spirit, please explain why and are there other example by 
Matthew
where hAGION and pneumatos are separated by a verb (ex. estin). Thanks.

Dony K. Donev
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