Re: Dative Participle Luke 8:27

From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Sun May 16 1999 - 14:59:34 EDT


At 11:43 AM -0700 5/16/99, clayton stirling bartholomew wrote:
>> Luke 8:27 starts out:
>>
>> EXELQONTI DE AUTWi EPI THN GHN hUPHNTHSEN ANHR . . .
>>
>> I was tempted at first to call EXELQONTI DE AUTWi EPI THN GHN a dative
>> absolute, but I discovered that no one agreed with me on this so I set
>> about to try and figure out why not.
>>
>> I think perhaps the answer is connected with the absence of an object
>> for hUPHNTHSEN. But I find AUTWi rather an unlikely candidate for the
>> role of object since it is clearly tied to the participle by the case
>> ending. If AUTWi is the object of hUPHNTHSEN then the participle
>> construction would not be absolute.
>>
>> There must be a perfectly obvious answer to this which I am overlooking.
>> What is it?
>>
>
>A quick glance at Matt 8:28 seems to settle this issue. In that context
>AUTWi is the object of hUPHNTHSAN. So it would appear that AUTWi in Luke
>8:27 is doing double duty. I know someone is going to say that this is a
>perfectly normal way to do things in Attic Greek but it still causes me
>to stop and ponder when I run into it in the NT.
>
>Perhaps I still don't have this right, if not let me know.

Just before any one else leaps at this, I DO want to say that "this is a
perfectly normal way to do things in Attic Greek" and I'd go a step further
and add that I don't think it's out of the ordinary for more literate
narrative style in Koine. Even the word order, I might add, is easy enough
to carry over into English without altering the emphasis (though the
construction is altered): "And as he went out onto the land, he was met by
a man ..." It really is quite common for a participial phrase in agreement
with a noun or pronoun that serves as the direct complement of the verb to
stand out in front of the verb which is then followed by its subject.

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University
Summer: 1647 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/

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