[B-Greek] Justin and objective genitives

Ehrman, Bart D behrman at email.unc.edu
Tue Mar 8 05:04:44 EST 2011


Mike and Carl,

     Thanks for this – I don’t seem to have received Carl’s reply, and so have it only in  Mike’s affirmation of it.

     Could I ask for a further explanation?  I’m not disinclined to agree in principle, but I don’t fully understand.  You seem to be saying (at least at the end) that grammar cannot be used to decide the meaning of the two words in relation to one another.  But that’s what grammar *does*, isn’t it?  I’m not too worried about the precise labels (“objective genitive” “subjective genitive” “genitive of origin” and so on); my question is really whether the phrase “Memoir + genitive” can mean “Memoir that is about X” as opposed to, say, “Memoir that is written by X” or “Memoir that is owned by X” etc.   And if it can mean “memoir that is about X” what analogies do we have for the usage, apart from instances where the noun is an “active” term of some kind?


n  Bart Ehrman

Bart D. Ehrman
James A. Gray Professor
Department of Religious Studies
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

http://www.bartdehrman.com<http://www.bartdehrman.com/>





From: Michael Aubrey [mailto:mga318 at yahoo.com]
Sent: Monday, March 07, 2011 6:26 PM
To: Carl Conrad; Ehrman, Bart D
Cc: b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: Re: [B-Greek] Justin and objective genitives

Carl is right.

Mike Aubrey
http://evepheso.wordpress.com

________________________________
From: Carl Conrad <cwconrad2 at mac.com>
To: "Ehrman, Bart D" <behrman at email.unc.edu>
Cc: "b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org" <b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Mon, March 7, 2011 1:28:00 PM
Subject: Re: [B-Greek] Justin and objective genitives


On Mar 7, 2011, at 4:12 PM, Ehrman, Bart D wrote:

> Greekers,
>
>    There is a much disputed passage in Justin’s Dialogue with Trypho, which may indicate (or not) that he was familiar with a Gospel of Peter:
>
> Καὶ τὸ εἰπεῖν μετωνομακέναι αὐτὸν Πέτρον ἕνα τῶν ἀποστολῶν, καὶ γεγράφθαι ἐν τοῖς ἀπομνημονεύμασιν αὐτοῦ γεγενημένον καὶ τοῦτο, μετὰ καὶ ἄλλους δύο ἀδελφοῦς, υἱοῦς Ζεβεδαίου ὄντας, ἐπωνομακέναι ὀνόματι Βοανεργές, ὅ ἐστιν υἱοῖ βροντῆς.... Dial 106.3

[KAI TO EIPEIN METWNOMAKENAI AUTON PETRON hENA TWN APOSTOLWN, KAI GEGRAFQAI EN TOIS APOMNHMONEUMASIN AUTOU GEGENHMENON KAI TOUTO, META KAI ALLOUS DUO ADELFOUS, hUIOUS ZEBEDAIOU ONTAS, EPWNOMAKENAI ONOMATI BOANERGES, hO ESTIN hUIOI BRONTHS.... Dial 106.3]

>    Justin refers to the “Memoirs” on fifteen occasions in his writings; most of the time the term occurs with a genitive of origin or source: “the Memoirs of the apostles.”  In one instance Justin states unequivocally what he means – these are “the Gospels”: οἱ γὰρ ἀπόστολοι ἐν τοῖς γενομένοις ὑπ’ αὐτῶν ἀπομνημονεύμασιν, ἅ καλεῖται εὐαγγέλια (I Apol. 66.3).
>
>    In the passage I’m interested in, Dialogue 106.3, the debate is over whether he is referring to the Gospel of Peter (presumably, though not certainly, the same as discovered in the Akhmim fragment in 1886-87), the Gospel of Mark (as the “memoirs of Peter” as in Papias), or the “Gospel of Jesus.”  In the latter case, the genitive in the phrase ἐν τοῖς ἀπομνημονεύμασιν αὐτοῦ is some kind of objective genitive – the Gospel that has Jesus as its object.
>
>    My question is not about the relative plausibility of any of these options per se (I think he’s referring to a Gospel of Peter and, personally, find the Mark option implausible), but about the claim that this is probably (or could be) an objective genitive.  An objective genitive, of course, is used with nouns that imply some kind of action: love, hate, vision, and so on.  Does απομνημονευματα count as a noun of action?

I would not think so. On the other hand, I am rather dubious of the distinction made between "subjective" and "objective" genitives on the basis of whether the head noun is a noun of action. I think that any genitive of this sort attached to a noun like APOMNHMONEUMATA could mean either "notations of (made by) X" or "notations of (concerning) X." Of course, had the author taken pains to make a differentiation clear, s/he might have written APOMNHMONEUMATA GEGRAMMENA hUPO + gen. or APOMNHMONEUMATA PERI TOU/TWN ... But I really don't think there's any grammatical rule that will resolve the question whether he intended these memos to be "composed by him" or to be "concerning him." I just don't think the question can be resolved on a grammatical basis. Sorry.

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)



---
B-Greek home page: http://www.ibiblio.org/bgreek
B-Greek mailing list
B-Greek at lists.ibiblio.org<mailto:B-Greek at lists.ibiblio.org>
http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-greek



More information about the B-Greek mailing list