[B-Greek] Acts 17,11

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Wed Mar 31 20:43:44 EST 2004


At 5:34 PM -0800 3/31/04, Eddie Mishoe wrote:
>hOUTOI DE HSAN EUGENASTEROI TWN EN QESSALONIKHi,
>hOITINES EDEXANTO TON LOGON META PASHS PROQUMIAS, KAQí
>hHMERAN ANAKRINONTES TAS GRAFAS EI EXOI TAUTA hOUTWS
>
>EI is said to introduce an Indirect Question. I am not
>sure I have a good understanding of indirect questions
>and how they are captured in Greek. From what I do
>understand, I assume that EI EXOI TAUTA hOUTWS
>indirectly reconstructs a question that was originally
>asked by the Bereans to Paul and Silas. But that is
>not the sense I get. I don't see these Bereans asking
>Paul and Silas, "Are these things you are teaching
>so?" Rather, they were examining the Scripture to
>determine whether or not Paul's and Silas's teachings
>were valid. How does EI introduce an indirect question here?

ECEI hOUTWS is "Is it so" or ECEI TAUTA hOUTWS is "Are these things so?"
That's the question being posed by the subjects here as they ANAKRINOUSI;
when it's put into an indirect question, the verb ECEI in more formal Greek
went into the optative of the same tense as the direct question; so we have
"researching the text of scripture (to see) whether these things were so."
-- 

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/



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