[B-Greek] Use of TO with Infinitive

Mark Lightman lightmanmark at yahoo.com
Thu Jan 6 11:39:11 EST 2011


Gene and Carl did a good job of explaining the construction, but Adrian's 
question was why, in 1 and 2 Thessalonians,  the infinitive, in the same 
constructions, sometimes has the article and sometimes does not. I think that 
was a very good question. 


I reread these two letters yesterday and I noticed the same thing.  Sometimes 
the article is there with the infinitive in a given construction and sometimes 
it is not.  In general, and certainly in the citations that Adrian gave, I can 
find no real difference in meaning.   The article was less common in poetry, so 
I believe that the  Greeks were hard-wired to take it or leave it and did so in 
the interest of variety and euphony as much as semantic nuance. Paul probably 
did not even think about it, and so perhaps neither should we.



 Mark L
Φωσφορος 


FWSFOROS MARKOS




________________________________
From: Gene Cockerham <Gene.Cockerham at ncpres.org>
To: bgreek at global4.freeserve.co.uk; b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org
Sent: Wed, January 5, 2011 8:26:24 AM
Subject: Re: [B-Greek] Use of TO with Infinitive

J Gresham Machen
Lesson XXII
Paragraphs 301-305
In general - the Greek infinitive is a verbal noun and so like any other
noun can take the article. With an article the infinitive can stand in
the place of most nouns.  "Thus, KALON ESTI TO APOTHANEIN HUPER TWN
ADELFWN, means the act of dying in behalf of the brethren is good..."
Here TO APOTHANEIN is a noun in the nominative case, being the subject
of the verb ESTI."

Sorry for the quoted section - I do not have the experience that many of
the contributors of this list serve - hopefully someone can expound on
this if necessary.

-----Original Message-----
From: b-greek-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org
[mailto:b-greek-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org] On  Behalf Of
bgreek at global4.freeserve.co.uk
Sent: Wednesday, January 05, 2011 8:16 AM
To: b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: [B-Greek] Use of TO with Infinitive

Hello Everyone,

I keep coming across a construction using TO + infinitive, and I am not
sure what difference the article makes to the meaning compared to using
the infinitive on its own.  Some examples would be:

TO MH hUPERBAINEIN.... (1Thess4:6)
....EIS TO AGAPAN ALLHLOUS (1Thess4:9)
ENDEIGMA THS DIKAIAS KRISEWS TOU QEOU, EIS TO KATAXIWQHNAI....
(2Thess1:5)
EIS TO MH TACEWS SALEUQHNAI.... (2Thess2:2)

Would somebody please be kind enough to explain to me what difference
the use of the  article makes to the meaning?

Many thanks
Adrian  Clark

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