cwconrad wrote:(1) articular infinitives in the genitive: I think that the genitive originally depended upon ἕνεκα but became a standard construction equivalent to ἵνα + subjunctive or ὥστε + infinitive. I think it's also the case that all three of these constructions expanded their semantic range in Hellenistic Greek so as to express purpose, result, or intention of the subject of the clause in question: something like "so as to"
Is there rhyme or reason to choosing which one of those constructions could be used for a given set of circumstances? Let me think aloud for a moment...
In light of what Carl has said about καταπαῦσαι having a causative useage, I suspect now is that the genitive articular infinitive distances the "stopping" from the "sacrificing". That is to say Barnabas and Paul didn't stop disrupt the ceremony directly (by putting out the fire or breaking the knife), but indirectly by talking to the people, who then stopped. What about this thought, if Barnabas and Paul took a physical action to stop the ceremony then using "ἵνα + subjunctive or ὥστε + infinitive" would be more applicable. To understand our sentence by what it does not say, we could hypothetically construct, παρεκάλεσαν ὁ Παῦλος και Βαρναβᾶς τοὺς ὄχλους ἵνα μὴ διατελοῦσιν θύσοντες "Paul and Barnabas told the people that they didn't need to be doing what they were doing, and that there was no benefit to continuing with the sacrifice" (That translation is heavily weighted to the παρακαλεῖν). If the action that allowed something to happen was not immediately related then we could hypothesise something like, αἰτησάντων τὸν θεόν τοῦ Παύλου καὶ Βαρναβᾶ ἐγένετο Ὄμβρος/λαῖλαψ ὥστε μὴ θύσειν τοὺς ὄχλους "Paul and Barnabas asked God and then there was a storm so the crowd had to quit their sacrificing". (Neither of which two acts would have been so helpful for the people's salvation as what they
did do).
... any of those disctinction in usage seem plausible?
Stephen Hughes wrote:3) Does this verb καταπαῦσαι usually refer more to an action in the sense of pause it, or in the sense of completely stop it happening? Are there a body of contemporary examples where it could plausibly mean "prevent [something] from ever starting"?
cwconrad wrote:Evidently not. καταπῦσαι and καταπαῦσις appear secondarily to indicate coming to rest after labor or, as a causative, to bring something or someone to rest, but fundamentally the sense of καταπαῦσαι as a causative in the sense "put the kibosh on".or "halt in his/its tracks".
That was my feeling too. ἀναπαύεσθαι (ἀνάπαυσις) would be temporary rest before getting up again or getting back to work, while . Gven that disinction, it seems that the "and I will give you rest" of the popular verse
Matthew 11:28 wrote:Δεῦτε πρός με πάντες οἱ κοπιῶντες καὶ πεφορτισμένοι, κἀγὼ ἀναπαύσω ὑμᾶς.
would mean "a little break", "let you be refreshed and work on", "give you a break so you can go back to work fresh", rather than stop you working and labouring outright.