Re: EIS ZWHN AIWNION

From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Tue Aug 25 1998 - 07:32:30 EDT


At 9:12 PM -0500 8/24/98, clayton stirling bartholomew wrote:
>Thank you Ben, Paul, and Carl.
>
>I really didn't intend to reopen the debate between Augustine and Pelagius
>with this question. That aspect of the question didn't even occur to me until
>I had become embroiled in solving the syntax puzzle.

Please let's NOT discuss that here!

>Both Ben and Paul have raised an intriguing question about lexical semantics
>which I will not address, but it might be worth a thread of it's own if
>others want to pick up on it.
>
>Of the several solutions to this syntax puzzle that I looked at, I think
>Carl's has the most to recommend it:
>
>Carl W. Conrad wrote:
>>
>> I'd say that what we have here is an emphatic initial verb used absolutely:
>> EPISTEUSAN; then follows the subject which is expressed in a relative
>> clause: hOSOI HSAN TETAGMENOI EIS ZWHN AIWNION, "all who had been appointed
>> to eternal life."
>
>The point that I was not quite able to grasp before Carl made it clear is that
>the relative CLAUSE (not hOSOI alone) is functioning here as the subject.
>Having said that I am a little confused about what Carl means when he says
>EPISTEUSAN is used absolutely. I guess what he means is that EPISTEUSAN takes
>no object. Correct?

Correct. "Absolute" is fairly commonly used of verbs that normally take a
complement but are also used intransitively, as here.

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics/Washington University
One Brookings Drive/St. Louis, MO, USA 63130/(314) 935-4018
Home: 7222 Colgate Ave./St. Louis, MO 63130/(314) 726-5649
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu OR cconrad@yancey.main.nc.us
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/

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