Acts 14:18 μόλις & καταπαῦσαι + gen.art.inf.
Posted: October 27th, 2013, 4:47 pm
There are a few points of grammar in this verse that I need help with -
What I think I get is that:
"Despite all their efforts to tell the people about the true God, and even while they were actually saying these things, it was all they could do to just to stop them for a brief moment from the sacrifice they were making to them as [what they perceived to be] avatars of Jupiter and Mercury" (Translated from the verse and its surrounding context, Roman names of "gods" used for religion in the Roman Empire).Acts 14:18 wrote:Καὶ ταῦτα λέγοντες, μόλις κατέπαυσαν τοὺς ὄχλους τοῦ μὴ θύειν αὐτοῖς.
What I think I get is that:
- 1) The verb used is καταπαῦσαι and not κωλύειν, so “stop” means, “make them not do it anymore”, rather than “prevent them from starting to do it”
2) The τί ταῦτα ποιεῖτε of Acts 14:15 means that the sacrifice had gotten underway
- 1) I still can't get my head around articular infinitves. Why is this in the genitive here? Is it purpose?
2) What sort of fish are swimming in μόλις's kettle?Is it an adverb of intensification like a negative of λίαν "very" or an adverb of manner like δυσκόλως "with difficulty"? Could it be taking in its temporal adverbial sense here "only for a moment". I think it is perhaps both of time and manner, hence the wordy translation to express both senses.
- 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"?