[b-greek] Re: Luke 4:35

From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Fri Mar 23 2001 - 08:31:06 EST


At 6:15 PM -0800 3/22/01, Kenneth Litwak wrote:
>KAI hRIYAN AUTON TO DAIMONION EIS TO MESON
>EXHLQEN AP' AUTOU MHDEN BLAYCAN
>AUTON.
>
>No, TO DAIMONION is obviously
>
>Obviously? Why is it obvios? Even if it is the implied
>subject, it does nto prevent MHDEN from being the
>specific subject for the aorist participle that I can
>see. Again, I think that would be awkward, but after
>reading parts of several classical and Hellenistic
>authors, nothing would surprise me, and hardly
>anything that I would cosntrue as a rule applies to
>some of what I've seen.

Ken, it really is NOT true, as you seem to think, that Greek grammar and
idiom is arbitrary. This is really perfectly intelligible in terms of it's
own logic and word-order, provided only that you DO RECOGNIZE the fact that
these participles, hRIYAN and BLAYAN are parallel neuter sg. participles:

Woodenly literal: "And upon jolting him, the spirit into (their) midst came
out of him, not at all having harmed him."

And if you attempt to detach that final phrase MHDEN BLAYAN AUTON from what
precedes, you'd have a grammatical anacoluthon; you couldn't call that
phrase an accusative absolute (as if, "Nothing having harmed him") because
the accusative absolute is rare even in classical Attic and ONLY used with
impersonal verbs (EXON, for instance, "it being possible" from EXESTI); but
BLAPTW is far from being an impersonal verb.

I can understand your seeing a problem with MHDEN and not recognizing that
it's an adverbial accusative of the pronoun--it's not the sort of thing
that gets emphasized in first-year grammar, but by the time most students
have gotten through a second or third year of Greek they will have seen
OUDEN commonly, MHDEN less commonly used as an adverbial accusative several
times. What is imperative for a learner who's gotten beyond the first year,
is to take careful note of such usage, and if it hasn't sunk in the first
time, it certainly should when one sees it a second and a third time. Here
are a couple Pauline examples:

1 Cor 13:3 OUDEN WFELOUMAI: "I profit not at all."

Gal 2:6 hPOIOIO POTE HSAN OUDEN MOI DAFEREI: "Whatever kind they were
matters not at all to me."

>the subject of
>EXHLQEN and both aorist neuter
>participles, hRIYAN and BLAYAN depend upon it;
>MHDEN is adverbial
>accusative construed with BLAYAN, "after doing no
>harm" = "after harming
>not at all."
>
>--
>
>Carl W. Conrad
>
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--

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics/Washington University
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/

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