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

Mark Lightman lightmanmark at yahoo.com
Mon Oct 18 20:59:27 EDT 2010


Marilyn egrapse:

>  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.

Hi, Marilyn,

It's good to hear your voice, so to speak, somewhere other than in my MP3 
player.

Carl and Father Patrick have explained the attraction, but your question  is 
about the ME, right?  If original, I would stick with the theory of  attraction 
and take it as an accusative of respect  " a witness of the  things which you 
have seen in respect to me, and the things I will show  to you."  This appears 
to be the way NIV takes it.  ("A witness of what  you have seen of me.")  But 
NRSV may be doing something a little  different "the things in which you have 
seen me."  Under this scenario,  maybe the first hWN is some kind of genitive of 
source ("a witness of  the things from where you are able to see me.") and 
attraction explains  only the second hWN.

If your question was not about the ME, I'll make it MY question.  How do  the 
esteemed scholars see the grammar of this ME which may or may not  have been 
there? 


 Mark L



FWSFOROS MARKOS




________________________________
From: Carl Conrad <cwconrad2 at mac.com>
To: Marilyn Phemister <windmill65 at yahoo.com>
Cc: B-Greek <B-Greek at lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Mon, October 18, 2010 3:37:47 PM
Subject: Re: [B-Greek] Acts 26:16 hWN TE EIDES ME and hWN TE OFQHSOMAI SOI

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)



---
B-Greek home page: http://www.ibiblio.org/bgreek
B-Greek mailing list
B-Greek at lists.ibiblio.org
http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-greek



      


More information about the B-Greek mailing list