>I've been bumped off the list and have missed digest 389 and 390, until
>Carl W. Conrad kindly forwarded me his copy. So I am reading just now what
>Dale M. Wheeler wrote in reply. Let me add, then, some minor comments.
>It is *not* true that "the evidence is at best ambiguous". I'd say it is
>very clear. When we examine "hEWS hOU", we can be sure that it derives not
>from "hEWS TOU XRONOU (KAIROU) hWi" but from "hEWS TOUTOU (EKEINOU) hWi".
>We only need to look at a common phrase like "MEXRI TOUTOU (TOUDE)" (Hdt.
>II 99.1; Thuc. I 71.4; etc.). The only ambiguity of "TOUTOU" is the
>morphological one. In theory it could equally be either the genitive of
>"TOUTO" or the genitive of "OUTOS". But the two so called options are not
>equal at all. *Nobody* could seriously imagine here "TOUTOU" as masculine.
>It cannot but be neuter. *Logically* it is tantamount to "TOUTOU TOU XRONOU
>(KAIROU)". *Literally* it is the genitive of "TOUTO". There is no possibile
>ellipsis of "TOU XRONOU (KAIROU)". Why are the two options not evenly
>matched? Because in normal Greek usage "TOUTOU" can be meant as a masculine
>only when it is clearly referred to a man (or male animal) or anaphorically
>to something expressed by a masc. noun. Otherwise it is, as a rule, the
>genitive of "TOUTO". One cannot understand the rich plasticity and the
>multiform usage of the neuter in Greek if we only look at English. The
>usage of "THIS" is not near as wide as the usage of "TOUTO" in Greek.
Thanks so much for your comments Domenico, I agree 100%, esp., with your
observation that no one could possibly think that TOUTO in these phrases is
Masculine. The passages I found--in a quick perusal of Smyth--and your's
from Herodotus and Thucydides are the clinchers for me. I would surmise,
then, that BAGD's mention of the phrase hEWS TOU XRONOU hWi as the background
of hEWS hOU is intended, as you point out, to be the "logical" antecedant
to the phrase, but in the Greek mind this has already been compressed to
TOUTO, as with MEXRI TOUTO (esp., since BAGD doesn't list any references to
this fuller phrase).
Thanks again for helping me chase this down; this information will be
reflected in the next version of the GRAMCORD MorphGNT and the MorphLXX...
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Dale M. Wheeler, Th.D.
Research Professor in Biblical Languages Multnomah Bible College
8435 NE Glisan Street Portland, OR 97220
Voice: 503-251-6416 FAX:503-254-1268 E-Mail: dalemw@teleport.com
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