[B-Greek] Acts 26:16 hWN TE EIDES ME and hWN TE OFQHSOMAI SOI
Carl Conrad
cwconrad2 at mac.com
Tue Oct 19 12:48:14 EDT 2010
On Oct 19, 2010, at 8:40 AM, Mark Lightman wrote:
> Hi, Vacile,
>
> You are next to Marilyn in my I-Pod, your Genesis:
>
> http://stancu.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/gen-gv.mp3
>
> <My feeling is that the ὧn hWN here designates a two way Genitive, one related
> to MARTURA and the other to the unexpressed object of εἶδες EIDES and ὀφθήσομαι
> OFQHSOMAI respectively, giving thus sense to the με ME and everything else.>
>
> So the με ME is in apposition to the hWN's? How would you translate the ME?
>
> Mark L
>
>
>
> FWSFOROS MARKOS
>
>
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: Vasile STANCU <stancu at mail.dnttm.ro>
> To: Mark Lightman <lightmanmark at yahoo.com>; Carl Conrad <cwconrad2 at mac.com>;
> Marilyn Phemister <windmill65 at yahoo.com>
> Cc: B-Greek <B-Greek at lists.ibiblio.org>
> Sent: Mon, October 18, 2010 10:16:21 PM
> Subject: RE: [B-Greek] Acts 26:16 hWN TE EIDES ME and hWN TE OFQHSOMAI SOI
>
> My feeling is that the ὧn hWN here designates a two way Genitive, one related to
> MARTURA and the other to the unexpressed object of εἶδες EIDES and ὀφθήσομαι
> OFQHSOMAI respectively, giving thus sense to the με ME and everything else.
>
> Vasile Stancu
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: b-greek-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org
> [mailto:b-greek-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Mark Lightman
> Sent: Tuesday, October 19, 2010 3:59 AM
> To: Carl Conrad; Marilyn Phemister
> Cc: B-Greek
> Subject: Re: [B-Greek] Acts 26:16 hWN TE EIDES ME and hWN TE OFQHSOMAI SOI
>
> 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?
The text itself is really questionable here. NA27/UBS3 has ME braccketed. I think that the text makes better sense without it (as MT exhibits it). But that is precisely why the textual critics speak of hWN TE EIDES ME as the "lectio difficilior" -- "the reading harder to make sense of."
The NET note on this text reads as follows:
"50 tc ‡ Some MSS read “of the things in which you have seen me.” The accusative object με (me, “me”) is found after εἶδές (eides) in B C✱vid 614 945 1175 1505 1739 1891 2464 pc sy sa; it is lacking in P74 ℵ A C2 E Ψ 096 M latt bo. The external evidence is relatively evenly divided, though there is a slight preference for the omission. NA27 includes the word in brackets, indicating some doubt as to its authenticity."
I would question understanding hWN TE EIDES ME as “of the things in which you have seen me.” I'm no textual critic, but it would appear to me that either (a) ME was added by some scribe as a direct object of EIDES in order to make EIDES ME an active parallel to the hWN TE OFQHSOMAI SOI, or (b) ME was omitted in order to make the parallelism between hWN TE EIDES and hWN TE OFQHSOMAI SOI more intelligible. It seems to me that both alternatives are problematic; although I think I prefer reading the text without ME, on the other hand understanding OFQHSOMAI SOI as a causative middle (as I suggested in my initial response to the query) is somewhat awkward, inasmuch as the expression OFQHNAI TINI ordinarily is intransitive in the sense of "appear to someone" rather than causative "make oneself seen by someone." The choice seems to lie, it seems to me, rather "between a rock and a hard place," or to be more precise, between a "lectio difficilior" and a "lectio difficillima."
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
> ________________________________
> 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)
More information about the B-Greek
mailing list