[B-Greek] Acts 26:16 hWN TE EIDES ME and hWN TE OFQHSOMAI SOI

Carl Conrad cwconrad2 at mac.com
Mon Oct 18 17:37:47 EDT 2010


On Oct 18, 2010, at 5:13 PM, Marilyn Phemister wrote:
>  Esteemed Scholars,
> 
> I'm having difficulty understanding the two four-word phrases beginning with hWN in Acts 26:16:
> 
> 
> εἰς τοῦτο γὰρ ὤφθην σοι, προχειρίσασθαι σε ὑπηρέτην καὶ μάρτυρα ὧν τε εἶδες [με] ὧν τε ὀφθήσομαι σοι,
> 
> EIS TOUTO GAR WFQHN SOI, PROXEIRISASQAI SE hUPHRETHN KAI MARTURA hWN TE EIDES ME hWN TE OFQHSOMAI SOI
> 
> 
> I don't understand the use of hWN with ME in the first one and hWN with OFQHSOMAI  in the second one.

I think that both relatives are genitive dependent upon MARTURA in a common construction wherein the relative pronoun takes the case of the implicit but unexpressed generalized antecedent (as in "I didn't see [the one] who did this."). " ... to designate you as agent and witness of what you've seen and of what I'll reveal to you."

I think the difficulty here probably lies in OFQHSOMAI. Although it's customary to call this a "deponent" or, as BDAG likes to put it, "Passive with active sense", we most commonly see this in the aorist with a dative of the person, OFQHNAI TINI "appear to someone (in a vision)." I think it would make more sense to speak of this as a causative middle, "make oneself visible to someone" or "make visible to someone." Here we have two forms of the verb hORAW, one of them active, the author causative middle.
So I understand the key phrases being asked about here as: "of (the things) which you have seen and of (the things) which I shall make you see (i.e. reveal to you)."

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






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