From: GLENN WOODEN (glenn.wooden@acadiau.ca)
Date: Fri Mar 29 1996 - 16:06:29 EST
Bernard,
According to Smyth (section 976ff) the full range of cases occur in
Classical Greek as appositives.
> How would you translate into Greek the following:
> I see him, a good man.
> Would "a good man" be in the acc (of apposition)? Or would it be in the
> nominative implying something like:
> I see him[. He is] a good man.
I would translate "a good man" as accusative, the same as "him". An
appositive, after all, is simply another word identifying the
referent and each that follows the first can take the place of the
first. That is the grammatical explanation. At a different level,
"him, a good man" is an equative statement, but when we take the
appositives out of a sentence and make them into a sentence we have
to make them nominatives, i.e., "He is a good man"' That, however,
is not how they function in your first sentence.
> Like some others, off the top of my head I can only recall appositional
> nouns in the nom. Would the (koine) Greek speaker, for whatever reason,
> only use apposition in the nominative, or is my exposure simply too
> limited, and acc apposition does occur?
For an example in the Genitive, see Romans 5:15: TOU hENOS ANQRWPOU
IHSOU XRISTOU. I am confident they can be found in every case.
Glenn
Glenn Wooden
Acadia Divinity College
Wolfville N.S.
Canada
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