Accusative of ?? in Luke 7:29 (Archived discussion revisted)

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Stephen Hughes
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Accusative of ?? in Luke 7:29 (Archived discussion revisted)

Post by Stephen Hughes »

Rather than completely asking a new question, or expecting others to try to navigate the archives with their quirks, I have given a quotation of a previous discussion (using KL's current user name and compounding AH's comments into the chronological sequence, even though they are not specifically quoted by CW), before asking my own question.
Carlton Winbery 4:44 PM Sep 11 2001 wrote:
Carl Conrad 01:40 AM Sep 11 2001 wrote:
Ken Litwak [url=http://www.ibiblio.org/bgreek/test-archives/html4/2001-09/7177.html]9:46 PM Sept10 2001[/url] wrote:In Luke 7:29b, we read βαπτισθέντες τὸ βάπτισμα Ἰωάννου. By its parallel with 7:30, it should probably be understood as "having been baptized by John's baptism." This, however, requires using an accusative to express means. Surely that's to invent yet another grammatical category to use, rather than trying to make sense of it with accepted categories. How should this accusative be understood. Please don't tell me categories as such are bad, since when I asked, no one had a better practicable suggestion. Thanks.
Ken, in "classical" English grammar (what I was taught in the fifth grade, back around 1946--don't know if it's still taught that way or at all ... ), this was called a "received object of a passive verb." The example by which I was taught was: "I was given a book." In this situation the indirect object of "X gave me a book" has become the subject of a passive verb, but
the direct object still has to be expressed in an accusative (i.e. "objective") case form. That's exactly what τὸ βάπτισμα Ἰωάννου is here.

However, in the course of my ruminations on Greek voice, I've personally come to feel that it would be better to characterize the form βαπτισθέντες as an aorist MIDDLE participle with the sense "having gotten themselves baptized" and understand τὸ βάπτισμα Ἰωάννου as a "cognate accusative" of βαπτίζω (like the object in "see the sights" or the like.
Alex Hopkins 8:33 Sep 11 2001 wrote:
Ken Litwak 9:46 PM Sept10 2001 wrote:In Luke 7:29b, we read βαπτισθέντες τὸ βάπτισμα Ἰωάννου
and brought attention to the accusative.

I don't think I'm adding anything at variance with the answer Carl has already given, but note only that some of the grammar books like using the word 'retained' in describing this sort of accusative; see e.g. BDF 159 (1) 'The accusative of the thing is retained with the passive of [certain] verbs', or Wallace's GGBB p197 which speaks of the 'accusative of retained object'. See also Zerwick's excellent Biblical Greek illustrated by Examples, #72 (52): 'Verbs which in the active can govern a double accusative retain in the passive, in Greek, 'the accusative of the thing'.' Sometimes I think the terminology is more tangled than the meaning; e.g., re John 11:44 (ἐξῆλθεν ὁ τεθνηκώς , δεδεμένος τοὺς πόδας καὶ τὰς χεῖρας κειρίαις), the Zerwick/Grosvenor Analysis (1981 edition) takes τοὺς πόδας καὶ τὰς χεῖρας κειρίαις as accusatives of respect, while BDF 159, note 3, classify under 'The accusative with the passive' (i.e. what I refer to as retained accusative); the sense is perfectly clear - even if the grammatical nomenclature isn't.
I have read Carl's studies on the middle/passive voices and agree with most of what he says. Some of it I seek to express by using the older terminology of true passive and not true passive. I have, because of Carl, dropped the word, deponent, from my vocabulary.
In the case of this passage though, I have generally dealt with it by noting the tendency of the accusative to be used adverbally. When the accusative is used adverbally, it expresses measure in time or space, reference or respect, or manner. I think this one expresses manner and that the passive or middle form of the verb does not matter that much. A simple eg in Luke with an active verb is Luke 9:14, Κατακλίνατε αὐτοὺς κλισίας . . . "Seat them in groups . . ."

With the a passive form, Luke 16:19 ἐνεδιδύσκετο πορφύραν καὶ βύσσον. "He was clothed (If middle - clothed himself) with purple and fine linen. One that seems to me to be passive, Rev. 16:9 ἐκαυματίσθησαν οἱ ἄνθρωποι καῦμα μέγα "The men were burned with a great fire." So I think I would explain Luke 9:29 [(sic.) 9:27 SH] as an accusative used adverbally showing manner.
I'm wondering if the degree of specificity of the accusative affects the way the accusative is used or classified here. Are there other examples in the NT (or other literature) of either an accusative like this (adverbial, respect or cognate) with a very specific reference τὸ βάπτισμα Ἰωάννου "John's baptism" as opposed to καῦμα μέγα "a great fire", which is more qualitative than specific. Also τοὺς πόδας καὶ τὰς χεῖρας does not use a possessive. That may indicate that specifying a possessive was redundant in that case. πορφύραν καὶ βύσσον are vague nouns (something like what we have as uncountable nouns in English), as is ἐνδεδυμένος τρίχας καμήλου in Mark 1:6 (not a reference to a "garment of camel fur"). Contexts suggest that what was being worn was cut (or woven) to size. The options to resolve that seem to be that English idiom requires a specific reference, but Greek does not, that Greek allows for specification of something vague in certain circumstances, or that the middle makes a vague (non-specific accusative) more specific - hence this question.

Here is a reference to Smyth for the cognate accusative. There is an example of a specific accusative given in Smyth viz. “τὴν ἐν Σαλαμῖνι ναυμαχία_ν ναυμαχήσαντες” victorious in the sea-fight at Salamis” D. 59.97.
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Re: Accusative of ?? in Luke 7:29 (Archived discussion revis

Post by cwconrad »

Stephen Hughes wrote:I'm wondering if the degree of specificity of the accusative affects the way the accusative is used or classified here. Are there other examples in the NT (or other literature) of either an accusative like this (adverbial, respect or cognate) with a very specific reference τὸ βάπτισμα Ἰωάννου "John's baptism" as opposed to καῦμα μέγα "a great fire", which is more qualitative than specific. Also τοὺς πόδας καὶ τὰς χεῖρας does not use a possessive. That may indicate that specifying a possessive was redundant in that case. πορφύραν καὶ βύσσον are vague nouns (something like what we have as uncountable nouns in English), as is ἐνδεδυμένος τρίχας καμήλου in Mark 1:6 (not a reference to a "garment of camel fur"). Contexts suggest that what was being worn was cut (or woven) to size. The options to resolve that seem to be that English idiom requires a specific reference, but Greek does not, that Greek allows for specification of something vague in certain circumstances, or that the middle makes a vague (non-specific accusative) more specific - hence this question.

Here is a reference to Smyth for the cognate accusative. There is an example of a specific accusative given in Smyth viz. “τὴν ἐν Σαλαμῖνι ναυμαχία_ν ναυμαχήσαντες” victorious in the sea-fight at Salamis” D. 59.97.
I'm not quite sure what the scope of Stephen's query here might be, but there are two or three things that have been on my mind lately that seem related to this, so I'll put them here and try to link them to what I think the query is getting at.

(a) What kind of accusative? I don't think we've ever had any question regarding accusative case usage to compare with the befuddlement, amusement, consternation, etc., at the GGBB categorizations of genitive case usage. I've always thought the accusative was a rather simple case; I recall Joshua Whatmough saying that the accusative is the "limiting case" or "the adverbial case" par excellence. It limits the applicability of whatever it construes with, verb, adjective, adverb, preposition, etc. I think we're more or less in the habit of speaking of an "adverbial accusative" whenever we can't think of some more useful term, although the usage in question is perfectly clear: πολλὰ ἔπαθον, even if we English it as "I suffered many things", doesn't really point to "things" suffered but rather to "suffering a lot" or "a lot of suffering."

(b) Here's an instance of βάπτισμα for you, Stephen, verily one fitted out to work with a middle-passive verb:
Mark 10:38 ὁ δὲ Ἰησοῦς εἶπεν αὐτοῖς· οὐκ οἴδατε τί αἰτεῖσθε. δύνασθε πιεῖν τὸ ποτήριον ὃ ἐγὼ πίνω ἢ τὸ βάπτισμα ὃ ἐγὼ βαπτίζομαι βαπτισθῆναι;
βαπτισθῆναι is here described as an ordeal (it's clearly metaphorical, and "ordeal" is no trifling qualification) that will require considerable character and endurance to undergo: βαπτισθῆναι must here bear the sense "undergo the ordeal that I am going to undergo". How should we designate the accusative usage of βάπτισμα βαπτισθῆναι and its relative-clause formulation ὂ βαπτίζομαι? The sense, I'd say, is "undergo baptism" or "undergo an ordeal." Do we deem βαπτίζεσθαι/βαπτισθῆναι here a transitive verb taking a direct object? I'm more inclined to call it an adverbial accusative. Of course there's the time-honored (if time can honor anything) designation, "cognate accusative", where the verb is construed with a noun derivative from the verb itself: "do the dastardly deed." It seems to me that what we accomplish when talking that way is that we "objectify" an action or experience that is not really a concrete thing. There's certainly no way, is there, that we can conceive of this βάπτισμα as a "direct object" of βαπτίζειν/βαπτίζεσθαι. On the other hand, in Mk 1:6 ἐνδεδυμένος τρίχας καμήλου, I'd be inclined to say that τρίχας καμήλου is as much a direct object as any other garment that one chooses to don. Some of us might not care much for a hair shirt (I certainly would not want to call this a "fur coat"), but τρίχας καμήλου is as much a direct object of a verb (ἐνδύσασθαι here in the periphrastic pluperfect: He had donned, he was wearing ... ").

c) This really belongs somewhere else, but there really is a relationship to the same question of accusative usage. I've been doing a lot of thinking about the syntax of verbs of perception. Properly speaking, "see" and "hear" are not really transitive verbs; we envision something that impinges on our vision -- it's a subject-affected "action." there are several verbs of perception that have active-voice usage that mimics the construction of a transitive verb: ἐκείνην τὴν γυναῖκα εἶδον, βοὴν ἥκουσαμεν. Are these accusatives, γυναῖκα and βοὴν, direct objects? We'll probably say so, if we understand ἰδεῖν and ἀκοῦσαι as transitive verbs. Rutger Allan suggests that there's a metaphorical notion of "grasping" in these transitive constructions of simple verbs of perception (which are conceptually subject-affected but take middle-marking only when the intense self-conscious process of perception is involved). Think of English "comprehend" or "grasp" and of Koine Greek καταλαβεῖν (cf. Jn 1:5 καὶ τὸ φῶς ἐν τῇ σκοτίᾳ φαίνει, καὶ ἡ σκοτία αὐτὸ οὐ κατέλαβεν. -- does κατέλαβεν here mean "snuffed out" or "comprehended/understood"?). Well, may the accusatives that construe with ὁρὰν and ἀκούειν are really direct objects, but I suspect that could as well be called "adverbial accusatives", indicating the "limit" or "specification" to be understood with the verbal process.
οὔτοι ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς πάντα θεοὶ θνητοῖς ὑπέδειξαν,
ἀλλὰ χρόνῳ ζητέοντες ἐφευρίσκουσιν ἄμεινον. (Xenophanes, Fragment 16)

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Re: Accusative of ?? in Luke 7:29 (Archived discussion revis

Post by Stephen Hughes »

cwconrad wrote:On the other hand, in Mk 1:6 ἐνδεδυμένος τρίχας καμήλου, I'd be inclined to say that τρίχας καμήλου is as much a direct object as any other garment that one chooses to don. Some of us might not care much for a hair shirt (I certainly would not want to call this a "fur coat"), but τρίχας καμήλου is as much a direct object of a verb (ἐνδύσασθαι here in the periphrastic pluperfect: He had donned, he was wearing ... ").
Consider the level of complexity in expressions like this with the accusative. Compared with what might have been with a genitive, there is a lack of closed-class words (the words that forms the backbone of the language, functional and structure words that reoccur in many sentences). Words such as ἀπό are not used with the accusative, as they are used with the genitive in Matthew 3:4 εἶχεν τὸ ἔνδυμα αὐτοῦ ἀπὸ τριχῶν καμήλου. I think that using ἔνδυμα is more explicit than the ἐνδεδυμένος, but is still very vague about what he was wearing. Presumably, specifying the τρίχες implies that it was not simply a δέρμα καμήλειον (cf. Hebrews 11:37 ἐν αἰγείοις δέρμασιν, unless the implications of the τρίχες was that the skin was not treated and worked to remove the hairs), but rather a garment woven (ὑφασμένον) from τριχῶν καμήλου.

As regards the type or style of garment, I suppose (on etymological grounds) that the implications of using ἔνδυμα or ἐνδεδυμένος to describe or imply the garment is that it needed to be passes over the head (and hence hang from the shoulders when worn) gather be put on by broaches near the shoulder, or being wrapped around the body in some way, (as we do a button-down shirt). So, if you are imagining a shirt that needs to be put on over the head, then your calling it a shirts might be true. Along with James at 2:3 τὸν φοροῦντα τὴν ἐσθῆτα τὴν λαμπράν, we could refer to a long garment like this in general terms using a more gerneral word ἐσθής for a "long external garment" with a more general word φορειν for "wear". In later Greek ἐσθής survives till now in literary Greek as a longer (formal) garment (the common word in Modern Greek for for a long external woman's garment "φόρεμα" is a later spelling of φόρημα in a much narrower sense than "something worn", as LSJ describes its meaning.), and in Modern Greek the word φορειν has become the word for wear for all styles of clothing no matter how them are put on, while in the New Testament. The Modern Greek ντύνομαι can be used in the sense of dressing up, putting on an outward appearance using clothes.

The audience perception of James' use as a (only) very literal and specific garment that has an attractive quality, which is judging by external appearances.

There is nothing inherent in the description of John the Baptist's garment as long (covering his knees at least) necessarily implying that the garment was made of camel hair well-chosen and finely-woven into an expensive and comfortable garment.
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Re: Accusative of ?? in Luke 7:29 (Archived discussion revis

Post by cwconrad »

Stephen Hughes wrote:
cwconrad wrote:On the other hand, in Mk 1:6 ἐνδεδυμένος τρίχας καμήλου, I'd be inclined to say that τρίχας καμήλου is as much a direct object as any other garment that one chooses to don. Some of us might not care much for a hair shirt (I certainly would not want to call this a "fur coat"), but τρίχας καμήλου is as much a direct object of a verb (ἐνδύσασθαι here in the periphrastic pluperfect: He had donned, he was wearing ... ").
Consider the level of complexity in expressions like this with the accusative. Compared with what might have been with a genitive, there is a lack of closed-class words (the words that forms the backbone of the language, functional and structure words that reoccur in many sentences). Words such as ἀπό are not used with the accusative, as they are used with the genitive in Matthew 3:4 εἶχεν τὸ ἔνδυμα αὐτοῦ ἀπὸ τριχῶν καμήλου. I think that using ἔνδυμα is more explicit than the ἐνδεδυμένος, but is still very vague about what he was wearing. Presumably, specifying the τρίχες implies that it was not simply a δέρμα καμήλειον (cf. Hebrews 11:37 ἐν αἰγείοις δέρμασιν, unless the implications of the τρίχες was that the skin was not treated and worked to remove the hairs), but rather a garment woven (ὑφασμένον) from τριχῶν καμήλου.

As regards the type or style of garment, I suppose (on etymological grounds) that the implications of using ἔνδυμα or ἐνδεδυμένος to describe or imply the garment is that it needed to be passes over the head (and hence hang from the shoulders when worn) gather be put on by broaches near the shoulder, or being wrapped around the body in some way, (as we do a button-down shirt). So, if you are imagining a shirt that needs to be put on over the head, then your calling it a shirts might be true. Along with James at 2:3 τὸν φοροῦντα τὴν ἐσθῆτα τὴν λαμπράν, we could refer to a long garment like this in general terms using a more gerneral word ἐσθής for a "long external garment" with a more general word φορειν for "wear". In later Greek ἐσθής survives till now in literary Greek as a longer (formal) garment (the common word in Modern Greek for for a long external woman's garment "φόρεμα" is a later spelling of φόρημα in a much narrower sense than "something worn", as LSJ describes its meaning.), and in Modern Greek the word φορειν has become the word for wear for all styles of clothing no matter how them are put on, while in the New Testament. The Modern Greek ντύνομαι can be used in the sense of dressing up, putting on an outward appearance using clothes.

The audience perception of James' use as a (only) very literal and specific garment that has an attractive quality, which is judging by external appearances.

There is nothing inherent in the description of John the Baptist's garment as long (covering his knees at least) necessarily implying that the garment was made of camel hair well-chosen and finely-woven into an expensive and comfortable garment.
I was really focused in my discussion on the issue of the accusative usage rather than the nature of the garment. When I used the terms "hair shirt" and "fur coat" I was not trying to define the nature of the garment referred to as τρίχες καμήλου; I guess i was using "hair shirt" as implicitly indicating a deliberate choice of discomfort and asperity as opposed to a deliberate choice of comfort and softness. Way back when I was in college, as I recall, there was a scandal about the preference of President Eisenhower's "chief of staff" (Sherman Adams), for expensive vicuña coats. I don't know much about the quality of vicuña cloth, but I assumed it was "cushy" and that Sherman Adams was no ascetic; I've always assumed that the description of John the Baptist and the association with Elizah implicitly involved an ascetic life-style and that the τρίχες καμήλου worn by John was part of that association.
οὔτοι ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς πάντα θεοὶ θνητοῖς ὑπέδειξαν,
ἀλλὰ χρόνῳ ζητέοντες ἐφευρίσκουσιν ἄμεινον. (Xenophanes, Fragment 16)

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Re: Accusative of ?? in Luke 7:29 (Archived discussion revis

Post by Stephen Hughes »

Yes. The meaning of shirt is very broad, and my focus too narrow. Perhaps it would have been better to depersonalise and use, "if by shirt one means ... ", rather than talking about "you".

In my previous post, I ommited a a quotation that should have been included.
John Chysostom, Ascetam facetiis uti non debere wrote:Ἐκ τριχῶν καμήλου ὁ Ἰωάννης ἐσθῆτα ἐφόρει.
Chrysostom is paraphrasing.

Elijah's mantle is one of traps for young players in composition like μυεῖν "to close one's eyes". The hides of other animals can be expressed by δέρμα plus an adjective of the animal, but sheep-skin is a specific word μηλωτή.
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Re: Accusative of ?? in Luke 7:29 (Archived discussion revis

Post by cwconrad »

Stephen Hughes wrote:Yes. The meaning of shirt is very broad, and my focus too narrow. Perhaps it would have been better to depersonalise and use, "if by shirt one means ... ", rather than talking about "you".

In my previous post, I ommited a a quotation that should have been included.
John Chysostom, Ascetam facetiis uti non debere wrote:Ἐκ τριχῶν καμήλου ὁ Ἰωάννης ἐσθῆτα ἐφόρει.
Chrysostom is paraphrasing.

Elijah's mantle is one of traps for young players in composition like μυεῖν "to close one's eyes". The hides of other animals can be expressed by δέρμα plus an adjective of the animal, but sheep-skin is a specific word μηλωτή.
Perhaps Chrysostom thought that his namesake was an esthete rather than an ascete. :lol:
οὔτοι ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς πάντα θεοὶ θνητοῖς ὑπέδειξαν,
ἀλλὰ χρόνῳ ζητέοντες ἐφευρίσκουσιν ἄμεινον. (Xenophanes, Fragment 16)

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Re: Accusative of ?? in Luke 7:29 (Archived discussion revis

Post by Stephen Hughes »

cwconrad wrote:Perhaps Chrysostom thought that his namesake was an esthete rather than an ascete.
If not him, than at least perhaps others did ... John for whose sake the namesake John was named's cousin commented in a rhetorical question that people would not see Ἄνθρωπον ἐν μαλακοῖς ἱματίοις ἠμφιεσμένον; (Matthew 11:8, Luke 7:25), if they went to see the precursory John.
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Re: Accusative of ?? in Luke 7:29 (Archived discussion revis

Post by Stephen Hughes »

cwconrad wrote:I was really focused in my discussion on the issue of the accusative usage rather than the nature of the garment.
cwconrad wrote:(a) What kind of accusative? I don't think we've ever had any question regarding accusative case usage to compare with the befuddlement, amusement, consternation, etc., at the GGBB categorizations of genitive case usage. I've always thought the accusative was a rather simple case; I recall Joshua Whatmough saying that the accusative is the "limiting case" or "the adverbial case" par excellence. It limits the applicability of whatever it construes with, verb, adjective, adverb, preposition, etc. I think we're more or less in the habit of speaking of an "adverbial accusative" whenever we can't think of some more useful term, although the usage in question is perfectly clear: πολλὰ ἔπαθον, even if we English it as "I suffered many things", doesn't really point to "things" suffered but rather to "suffering a lot" or "a lot of suffering."
What I've also noticed in discussions on the accusative is that the classification discussions always centre on, but never state, that it is the way the accusative relates to other things in the sentence that gives it its name, not it itself by nature. What is being described are syntactic functions rather than the accusative itself. The (unstated) way that it is decided is usually by analogy - that observation of mine is based on that there is an absence of reasons for the choices made. I think that the quest to name has resulted in two things; First, the way the terminology sounds very absolute seems to suggest that there is something inherent in the case. Secondly, that it is probably something else in the word that allows it to be used, or prefers it to be used in a particular way. Rather than finding the end of the discussion in the correct choice of a name, I would like to side-step the idea that there is a choice of terminology to be made. I have been wondering and would like to discuss other other qualities of the meaning of the word, that might lead to a way forward, and to deconstruct what we are severally doing when we choose one or more classification of accusative.

The parallel with the propositional phrase (a preposition having the role of adverbialising of a nominal phrase, either conventionally or with the aim of adding some meaning - the meaning of how the nominal phrase are related to the action of the main or secondary verb) suggests your idea of an adverbial usage.

Because there is broadly speaking a pattern of using non-specific (or less specific) nominal phrases in situations like this, I am wondering whether that is significant too?

It is felt by many that having a "direct object" is one of the fundamentals in human speech, so there will be analyses of this situation that will find that this is a direct object. To do that, the voice needs to be downplayed in importance, "he (having) put on (a garment of) camel hair". The need to supply words in the English suggests that we really do know that they are not there (and neither the concepts behind them) in the Greek.
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Re: Accusative of ?? in Luke 7:29 (Archived discussion revis

Post by cwconrad »

I often hesitate for a while before deciding how much of the message I'm responding to needs to be cited. Here it seems to me that we've finally come back to the issue Stephen raised in his initial post in the thread. So, in a way, we're starting over. We're no longer talking about Johannine cover-up but about what to blame the accusative case for. Lord knows (and Stephen will tell you): the accusative case has taken a great deal of blame over the centturies -- perhaps deservedly so.
Stephen Hughes wrote:
cwconrad wrote:I was really focused in my discussion on the issue of the accusative usage rather than the nature of the garment.
cwconrad wrote:(a) What kind of accusative? I don't think we've ever had any question regarding accusative case usage to compare with the befuddlement, amusement, consternation, etc., at the GGBB categorizations of genitive case usage. I've always thought the accusative was a rather simple case; I recall Joshua Whatmough saying that the accusative is the "limiting case" or "the adverbial case" par excellence. It limits the applicability of whatever it construes with, verb, adjective, adverb, preposition, etc. I think we're more or less in the habit of speaking of an "adverbial accusative" whenever we can't think of some more useful term, although the usage in question is perfectly clear: πολλὰ ἔπαθον, even if we English it as "I suffered many things", doesn't really point to "things" suffered but rather to "suffering a lot" or "a lot of suffering."
What I've also noticed in discussions on the accusative is that the classification discussions always centre on, but never state, that it is the way the accusative relates to other things in the sentence that gives it its name, not it itself by nature. What is being described are syntactic functions rather than the accusative itself. The (unstated) way that it is decided is usually by analogy - that observation of mine is based on that there is an absence of reasons for the choices made. I think that the quest to name has resulted in two things; First, the way the terminology sounds very absolute seems to suggest that there is something inherent in the case. Secondly, that it is probably something else in the word that allows it to be used, or prefers it to be used in a particular way. Rather than finding the end of the discussion in the correct choice of a name, I would like to side-step the idea that there is a choice of terminology to be made. I have been wondering and would like to discuss other other qualities of the meaning of the word, that might lead to a way forward, and to deconstruct what we are severally doing when we choose one or more classification of accusative.

The parallel with the propositional phrase (a preposition having the role of adverbialising of a nominal phrase, either conventionally or with the aim of adding some meaning - the meaning of how the nominal phrase are related to the action of the main or secondary verb) suggests your idea of an adverbial usage.

Because there is broadly speaking a pattern of using non-specific (or less specific) nominal phrases in situations like this, I am wondering whether that is significant too?

It is felt by many that having a "direct object" is one of the fundamentals in human speech, so there will be analyses of this situation that will find that this is a direct object. To do that, the voice needs to be downplayed in importance, "he (having) put on (a garment of) camel hair". The need to supply words in the English suggests that we really do know that they are not there (and neither the concepts behind them) in the Greek.
First, a word about prepositional phrases. Somewhere in my callow youth I was taught (and still believe, deep down where it counts) that prepositions generally were/are themselves originally adverbs employed to add specificity to case-usage. I continue to be fond of thinking of the accusative case as marking the limit placed upon another word, be it a verb, an adjective, or another verb: τὸ εὐαγγέλιον? What do you mean, τὸ εὐαγγέλιον? Gospel? What gospel? Which gospel? What are you really talking about? τὸ εὐαγγέλιον τὸν Μάρκον! the gospel-- the Mark one. ἁλλὰ τί τοὐτο; "But what's that?" Who gets the blame for the gospel? Mark does. It's the Mark gospel. So you're blaming Mark for the gospel? Precisely, mark's the one to be accused. Could you be more specific? Okay, how about: "τὸ εὐαγγέλιον τὸ κατὰ Μάρκον"? That is to say, the gospel that follows the course of Mark, as if Mark were a river flowing downstream. Speech/communication would be impossible without metaphor, wouldn't it? I think that's more or less the case(!!!) with datives and genitives and their "governing" prepositions: ἀπὸ and ἐκ with a genitive, ἐν, ἐπὶ, etc. with a dative. The accusative always specifics what you're pointing at, always indicates the limit or terminal of what you're talking about. ἠλαύνομεν πέντε στάδια: "we kept on marching?" How long? How far? "Five stages." ἐβάλλομεν. "You struck? Struck what?" τὸν Μάρκον ἐβάλλομεν. "We kept hitting on Mark." Mark is the end-point of our striking.

I don't think that carries the discussion very far beyond my first response to Stephen's first formulation, but I'm not sure there's a lot more to say. The accusative is not a "case" that can be pinned down much more specifically -- it is the case for "pinning down" or "specifying" or "making more precise what it is you're saying." John was dressed -- he had something around his waist so as not to expose his nakedness. What? Can you specify what you're talking about? Well, yes: a loincloth, and, to be specific, the hide of a camel -- a hair-shirt.
οὔτοι ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς πάντα θεοὶ θνητοῖς ὑπέδειξαν,
ἀλλὰ χρόνῳ ζητέοντες ἐφευρίσκουσιν ἄμεινον. (Xenophanes, Fragment 16)

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
Stephen Hughes
Posts: 3323
Joined: February 26th, 2013, 7:12 am

Re: Accusative of ?? in Luke 7:29 (Archived discussion revis

Post by Stephen Hughes »

In reading the ideas about subject-affectedness that various people raise here on the forum, and the varying degrees of subject-(self)affectedness that one or other voice can imply, there is the other side of the coin too. Object-affectedness.

Are there verbs where object-affectedness is implied when a case other than the accusative is used with a verb? It seems that in most cases the accusative is used for situation involving object-affectedness. Is that a valid supposition.
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
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