(no subject)

From: Peter Phillips (p.m.phillips@cliff.shef.ac.uk)
Date: Mon Dec 01 1997 - 07:21:09 EST


Following up on some references on the use of EINAI in Luke given to me by
Rolf Furuli (thanks!), I make a few more observations of what Luke may well
be up to here.

1:10 PAN TO PLHQOS HN TOU LAOU PROSEUXOMENON
3:23 KAI AUTOS HN IHSOUS ARXOMENOS WSEI ETWN TRIAKONTA
4:3 EI UIOS EI TOU QEOU
4:9 EI UIOS EI TOU QEOU
4:22 OUXI UIOS ESTIN IWSHF OUTOS
6:5 KURIOS ESTIN TOU SABBATOU O UIOS TOU ANTHRWPOU
14:2 KAI ANQRWPOS TIS HN UDRWPIKOS EMPROSQEN AUTOU
16:1 ANQRWPOS TIS HN PLOUSIOS

>From these examples it is clear that on two occasions Luke is using
periphrasis and interweaving subject (and attendant words) and verb (and
auxiliary) - so in 1:10, 3:23. 4:3,9 and 22 and 6:5 are also similar to
one another in that they show an emphasised noun with a related genitive
noun/phrase placed after the verb.

14:2 and 16:1 are different. Here we have an adjective describing the
subject placed after the verb. Presumably this is predicative or
attributive (although what the difference is I am not too clear). Luke
seems to be saying that this was a man with, well, whatever "UDRWPIKOS" was
(14:2) as opposed to a man who didn't have this ailment. In 16:5 he is
calling specific attention to the fact that this man was wealthy. In
neither case can we say that he was meaning "The dropsical man" or "the
wealthy man". Should we then transfer these uses of EINAI to Luke 2:25
and say that Luke is saying that "a spirit that was holy was upon him"
rather than saying that "the Holy Spirit was upon him."

We seem to need to keep the indefinite here rather than bring in a definite
article that doesn't exist.

I suppose the next step is to examine the use of PNEUMA with other
adjectives in Luke...

Pete Phillips
Cliff College
Sheffield



This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Sat Apr 20 2002 - 15:38:36 EDT