[B-Greek] Syntax of Rev 21:3e
Steve Runge
srunge at logos.com
Tue Mar 15 11:21:01 EDT 2011
Hi Stephen,
If you take my revised reading with "God himself" as focal, there is no dislocation in Greek, it is simply in marked focus, with the pronominal element following. The problem with English is that we use intonation to communicate what word order does in Greek. Thus I added a complication in my translation that is not there in Greek. So, you cannot do a similar analysis of a left dislocation, I probably should have rephrased the translation. I suppose I could have put God himself in the it-cleft to mark it as focal, but I'd still have needed to add a resumptive pronoun: "It is God himself who will be with them." More English problems, best to stay in Greek.
Regarding your second question about the placement of the pronoun, that would be better addressed to Mike Aubrey. Note that based on the verb being in final position of the main clause and AUTWN QEOS comes right after it, the pronoun immediately follows the verb as you'd expect. Mike has studied the effects of clitic pronouns, and found that other pronouns can behave similarly in certain contexts, not sure if he'd say this is one of those. I'd explain the same phenomenon as natural information flow. At any rate, the point here is that if there is a NP consisting of a noun and a pronoun immediately following the verb, the pronoun will commonly be placed before the noun within the NP to be closer to the verb. I'll go give Mike a kick when I get to the office to see if he'll comment.
Steve Runge
-----Original Message-----
From: Stephen Carlson [mailto:stemmatic at gmail.com]
Sent: Tuesday, March 15, 2011 7:07 AM
To: Steve Runge
Cc: Biblical Greek Mailing List
Subject: Re: [B-Greek] Syntax of Rev 21:3e
On Mon, Mar 14, 2011 at 4:23 PM, Steve Runge <srunge at logos.com> wrote:
> 3e. and God himself, it is with THEM he will be--their God!
Thanks for your analysis, Steve, which is too extensive to quote. I appreciate it. I've got a couple of follow up questions:
I notice that your English rendering above sort of treats "God himself" (from αὐτὸς ὁ θεός) as a left-dislocation, which you resume with the pronoun "he." Is it possible to do a similar analysis of the Greek, or is the lack a resumptive pronoun there an impediment to seeing the left-dislocation?
Also, do you have any thought about the placement of the pronoun αὐτῶν before θεός? It was this feature that mainly led Charles to obelize the text.
Stephen
--
Stephen C. Carlson
Graduate Program in Religion
Duke University
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