> Does anyone else think that DIANOIAi might just be an instrumental dative
> ["scattered the proud by the thought of their mind]? That might be a form
> of the hardening of the heart motif. Just thought I would ask.
Edgar, this is an interesting idea, and it is certainly made grammatically
impossible by the failure of the LXX translators to use articles to
indicate properly how the different words should be construed. I can't
really conceive, however, how DIANOIAi KARDIAS AUTWN can be anything but
attributive to hUPERHFANOUS, and I suspect that the word-order of the
Hebrew text is being reproduced here. Certainly good Greek would have
expressed the idea you suggest rather something like: TOUS hUPERHFANOUS
DIESKORPISEN THi THS KARDIAS AUTWN DIANOIAi, and in less good Greek, that
sense might be expressed by the word-order: hUPERHFANOUS DIESKORPISEN
DIANOIAi KARDIAS AUTWN; but with DIESKORPISEN in initial position and
separated from DIANOIAi, that instrumental sense seems the more unlikely.
Got me thinking, however, of a couple wonderful Greek notions of what
God/Zeus can do by pure mental activity. Here's Xenophanes (DK21B25):
ALL' APANEUQE PONOIO NOOU FRENI PANTA KRADAINEI
Along these lines of what pure thought can accomplish, my very favorite is
Callimachus' clever little couplet about Zeus (Hymn 1.86-87):
hESPERIOS KEINOS GE TELEI TA KEN HRI NOHSHi:
hESPERIOS TA MEGISTA, TA MEIONA D' EUTE NOHSHi.
Sort of reminds me of "The difficult we do immediately, the impossible
takes a little longer."
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University
One Brookings Drive, St. Louis, MO, USA 63130
(314) 935-4018
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu OR cwc@oui.com
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/