Re: Greek Grammars on the Articulation of Prepositional Objects
Posted: July 22nd, 2020, 3:50 am
Next up is Frank Eakin, "The Greek Article in First and Second Century Papyri," American Journal of Philology 37 (1916): 333-340. Its goal is to see what the papyri contribute to our understanding of the article in the New Testament.
Eakin writes from a time in which there was some anxiety in accounting for non-classical usages, for which some scholars were prone to attribute to Hebraicisms. Eakin's answer, like Deissmann's, is to call attention to contemporary usage attested in the papyri. For anarthrous objects of prepositions, the main thrust of Eakin's argument is that certain indefinite interpretations of the absence of the article are unwarranted, but the argument as a whole seems to confound rather unsatisfactorially definite and qualitative readings of the anarthrous object (esp. in the translations with bare objects like "at home" and "in church"--one might also add "in town" for "in the/a city").Eakin 1916:333-4 wrote: A phenomenon that at once claims attention is the very frequent occurrence of "Anarthrous Prepositional Phrases". The following--all more or less frequently met with in these papyri--will serve as examples (one reference is each):
κατὰ καιρόν 34. II. 4, περὶ κώμην Κορῶβιν 45. 9, ἀπὸ κώμης Ψώβθεως 239.4, ἀπ' Ὀξυρύγχων πόλεως 38. 2, ἐν ἀγυιᾷ 73. 22, ἐπ' ἀμφόδου πλατείας 51. 15, εἰς δημοσίαν ῥύμην 69. 2, ἀπὸ λιβὸς ῥύμης 99. 7, ἐν οἰκίᾳ Ἐπαγαθοῦ 51. 13, εἰς υἱόν 37. I. 9, ἀπὸ κοπρίας 37. I. 7, ἐν χερσί 63. 7, κατὰ μητέρα 68. 8, μετὰ κυρίου 45. 6, μετὰ τελευτὴν αὐτοῦ 68. 14, εἰς κλείνην . . . ἀπὸ ὥρας θ 523.
Some of these phrases quoted from the papyri maz be duplicated, others closely paralleled, in the N. T. κατὰ καιρόν of course is frequent. The papyri give us ἐν οἰκίᾳ Ἐπαγαθοῦ, and in Matt. 26: 6 we find ἐν οἰκίᾳ Σίμωνος, which looks much the same. A resident of Oxyrhynchus invites a friend to dinner ἀπὸ ὥρας θ (at 9 o'clock), and the phrase ἀπὸ ἕκτης ὥρας in Matt. 27: 45 presents a very similar linguistic phenomenon. The very frequent ἀπ' Ὀξυρύγχων πόλεως of the papyri is paralleled by the N. T. ἐκ πόλεως Ναζαρέθ (Luke 2: 4). In P. Oxy. 63. 7 (see above) we found ἐν χερσί, and the N. T. furnishes many examples of the anarthrous use of this noun with various prepositions. (See e. g. Matt. 17: 22; 26: 45; Luke 1: 71, 74; 4: 11; Acts 2: 23; 7: 35; Gal. 3: 19.) With εἰς υἱόν (quoted above from papyri) cf. the same phrase in Acts 7: 21 and Heb. 1: 5. With ἀπὸ κοπρίας cf. εἰς κοπρίαν in Luke 14: 35--the only occurrence of this word in the N. T.
But even apart from this identity or similarity of phrases the mere fact that a strong tendency is observed in the papyri--as in the N. T.--to omit the article with nouns used in prepositional phrases is not without significance. It would appear that the great frequency of these short-cut phrases in the N. T. is simply another illustration of the close affinity between the Sacred Books and the common speech of the time. This being the case we should not be hasty in classing as "Hebraic" certain expressions which may well belong to this general class. It may be true that the use of such phrases as ἐν ἡμέρᾳ ὀργῆς and πρὸ προώπον Κυρίου is due to Hebrew influence, as Blass insists, but if so we need not suppose that even such a thoroughly Greek writer as Luke would greatly offend his linguistic "sense of fitness" when he adopted them. They are close parallels to many expressions which Greek-speaking people of the time used every day.
It is possible that in several passages the Revisers might have given us a slightly different translation if it had been possible for them to study the use of prepositional phrases in the papyri. For instance one who has made some such observations cannot well doubt that εἰς πόλιν in Mark 1: 45 means "into the city", as given in the margin, instead of "into a city",--as it stands in the text. In Luke 8: 27 we are told of the Gerasene demoniac that " for a long time he had worn clothes, and abode not ἐν οἰκίᾳ, but in the tombs ". The meaning is certainly " in the house ", i. e. "at home ", rather "in any house", as R. V. has it. In Heb. 1: 2 the marginal "a son" as an alternative to "his son" might probably be dispensed with. Westcott's rendering of ἐν συναγωγῇ (John 6: 59; 18: 20) "in time of solemn assembly" is a good illustration of this sort of error. The use of this phrase seems to have been very similar to that of our corresponding expression "in church".