[B-Greek] AUTOU in Jo 9:6
Carl Conrad
cwconrad2 at mac.com
Sat Mar 19 06:48:28 EDT 2011
On Mar 19, 2011, at 2:14 AM, Vasile Stancu wrote:
> I understand this, only I have tried to understand also the principle
> that might stand behind the fact that sometimes the subject of certain
> verbs may be in the genitive (AKOUW), or dative (AKOLOUW, PISTEUW),
> instead of the accusative, as in most of the other cases. The image
> that I have of such occurencies is that this construction indicates
> some kind of indirectness of the action: I do not really hear you, but
> I hear what you produce which my ears can receive (e.g., voice), or my
> brains can process (e.g., words), therefore I hear 'something of you';
> I do not really follow you, or believe you, but I follow perhaps, or
> believe, the teachings that I get from you.
>
> Why not the same in the case of EPEXRISEN? Not enough evidence? I
> would not be sursprised to find out that this is a kind of
> construction which was mostly used in colloquial communication, which
> explains why it is not found in philosophers' work or other kinds of
> elevated literature.
I think that's an astute and very likely an accurate suggestion. What we
have in these two verses of John are the only Biblical instances of this
verb meaning "smear X with Y." These two verses use it with a double
accusative (PHLON, OFQALMOUS) and a genitive of the person whose
eyes are smeared (AUTOU, MOU). The LSJ evidence point to a usage
of this verb with an accusative object of the person/thing smeared and
an insrumental dative of the substance with which one smears. It does
seem odd to me that we'd have a double accusative and a genitive
personal pronoun that is NOT possessive. Wieland suggests that this
might be a genitive usage that's a precursor of the later Greek merging
of genitive and dative usages in the genitive form, a proposition to
which I'm open theoretically but rather skeptical. Nevertheless, when
you suggest that we may have a construction in colloquial Greek that's
different from the usage of literary Greek, I must concede that pos-
sibility -- I'm reminded that the Latin verb UTOR is used by Cicero
and Classical writers in the "sermo urbanus" with an instrumental
ablative, but Plautus (ca 200 BC) and Vulgar Latin use UTOR with
an accusative direct object. But where might we see this Johannine
usage elsewhere? Where I would expect to see the language of
smearing an ointment upon a bodily surface is in the medical writers --
but I'd expect them to use the literary language! It just might be
worth the effort to get a TLG check on any other extant usages of
EPICRIEIN.
> 2011/3/18 Carl Conrad <cwconrad2 at mac.com>:
>>
>> On Mar 18, 2011, at 3:38 PM, Vasile Stancu wrote:
>>
>>> What about this (im)possibility: AUTOU works with EPEXRISEN as it
>>> would with HKOUSEN, for example. EPEXRISEN AUTOU would therefore mean
>>> 'he anointed him', as HKOUSEN AUTOU means 'he heard him'. Why not
>>> EPEXRISEN AUTON? Because Jesus anointed somewhat 'a part of him',
>>> i.e., his eyes, as in the case of HKOUSEN AUTOU, where he heard
>>> something of him, e.g., his voice, or his words. If he had wanted to
>>> refer directly to the 'object' of the anointment, he would have said,
>>> 'EXRISEN TOUS OFQALMOUS AUTOU', as in the case of AKOUW, where we may
>>> have HKOUSEN TON LOGON.
>>
>> But AKOUW takes an accusative of the thing heard and a genitive of the
>> person heard: HKOUSA AUTOU THN FWNHN. The verb EPICRIEIN
>> appears only in the two verses of John 9 under discussion in the GNT.
>> LSJ cites EPICRIEIN used with an accusative of the person or surface
>> anointed and an instrumental dative of the mixture that is smeared
>> ("smear X {acc} with Y {dat}). Unless someone attempts a TLG
>> search for EPICRIEIN, the evidence available is rather sparse.
>>
>>
>> Carl W. Conrad
>> Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
>>
>>
>>
>>
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Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
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