[B-Greek] Acts 26:16 hWN TE EIDES ME and hWN TE OFQHSOMAI SOI
Vasile Stancu
vstancu at clicknet.ro
Tue Oct 19 16:10:30 EDT 2010
Χαῖρε Μᾶρκε,
I am honoured for the position you grant to my humble contribution regarding the audio file.
As for Ac 26:16, the construction used is not really strange, in my opinion: it is just difficult to translate literally and model it by our grammatical patterns today.
... ὑπηρέτην καὶ μάρτυρα ὧν τε εἶδές με ὧν τε ὀφθήσομαί σοι,
... UPHRETHN KAI MARTURA WN TE EIDES ME WN TE OFQHSOMAI SOI,
The context leads to the understanding that Paul changed suddenly and dramatically after meeting Jesus on the road to Damascus; that would be an important thing Paul is later testifying in his preaching ministry, i.e., that he met/saw Jesus. At the same time, some things happened on that occasion. Those 'some things', along with the very fact that Paul met/saw Jesus, would be described by the first Genitive ὧν WN in conjunction with με ME. Then, the later context shows that Jesus revealed other things also to Paul, which again would be objects of his ὑπηρέτης-ship and μάρτυς-ship.
A possible translation of this could then be, '... servant and witness of the things related to you having met/seen me, as well as of those that I am going to reveal to you.'
I would favour the idea that the με ME was introduced later by someone who wanted to make clear that ὧν εἶδες WN EIDES should be not understood as having a general sense, e.g., 'of what you have seen in your life, or on the road from Jerusalem to Damascus', but is related to the specific event of Paul meeting/seing Jesus; the με ME would thus give that expression a certain specificity.
Vasile
From: Mark Lightman [mailto:lightmanmark at yahoo.com]
Sent: Tuesday, October 19, 2010 3:41 PM
To: vstancu at clicknet.ro; Carl Conrad; Marilyn Phemister
Cc: B-Greek
Subject: Re: [B-Greek] Acts 26:16 hWN TE EIDES ME and hWN TE OFQHSOMAI SOI
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?
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)
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