Re: TWi ~ A Relative Pronoun?

From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Sat Apr 10 1999 - 17:53:54 EDT


At 1:01 PM -0700 4/10/99, George Blaisdell wrote:
>Grammarians!
>
>EN PISTEI ZW TWi TOU hUIOUS TOU QEOU
>
>Is the TWi in this sentence a relative pronoun?
>
>No!
>
>It is simply an enfolded EN TWi PISTEI!!
>
>Too easy!!
>
>"In faith I am living, in the faith of the Son of God."
>
>"In faith" is anarthrous and thus generic, and is evoked around TWi
>[in virtue of the agreement of case, gender and number] which gives it
>specificity, and emphasis!
>
>As well, the TOU hUIOU TOU QEOU, because it has no preposition, is a
>generic genitive, indicating clearly the genesis of that faith,
>without further specificity. The 'generics' that begin and end this
>thought afford an elegant balance to such a simple sequence of 8
>Greek words.
>
>Ah, the Greek gets easier now!!
>
>:-) :-) :-)
>
>There, there, George ~ You're all better now...
>
>~ Big Sigh ~

I wasn't going to say this but since you've repeated this EN TWi PISTEI, I
can't go on without noting that PISTEI is a feminine noun: there's no TWi
there at all; it's EN THi PISTEI.

And for my part, I think you're drawing an altogether facile and
questionable assumption that "genitive" case means "genesis" of the noun.
The term "genitive" may originally have embodied a theory of how a noun in
the genitive is related to another word, but this particular theory won't
get you very far in explaining either some primary type of genitive or all
the varieties of genitive usage.

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics/Washington University
One Brookings Drive/St. Louis, MO, USA 63130/(314) 935-4018
Home: 7222 Colgate Ave./St. Louis, MO 63130/(314) 726-5649
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/

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