>>>Well, Randy, you have my curiosity pricked up now. I'm beginning
to wonder (a) whether perhaps it is our sense o what is right in
ENGLISH that governs our discomfort with taking hWN in the above
passage as the subject of TETAKTAI and makes us prefer understanding
the infinitive POIHSAI as the subject instead. I'm frankly not so
sure about this any more, but I'm INCLINED to think that the
infinitive really is explanatory. A parallel has occurred to me, but
it may raise more questions than it resolves: Mk 4:11: hUMIN TO
MUSTHRION DEDOTAI THS BASILEIAS TOU QEOU. No problem; but Mt
13:11: hOTI hUMIN DEDOTAI GNWNAI TA MUSHRIA THS BASILEIAS TWN OURANWN
... and Lk 8:10 hUMIN DEDOTAI GNWNAI TA MUSTHRIA THS BASILEIAAS TOU
QEOU ... Does this have any bearing on Acts 22:10, KAKEI SOI
LALHQHSETAI PERI PANTWN hWN TETAKTAI SOI POIHSAI? Well, I really
suspect that if POIHSAI was (were) meant as subject of TETAKTAI, it
would have been expressed earlier in the clause as in the examples
hUMIN DEDOTAI GNWNAI TA MUSTHRIA. But I'm far less confident about
this than I once was. Once more, Randy, you have caught me reverting
to what you call agnosticism!
<<<
Carl, you hit on two of my examples: Mt. 13:11 and its Lucan
parallel. I don't have time to write much right now, but I would also
cite Acts 26:1, 28:16, and I Cor. 14:34 as germane to the discussion.
The clearest examples of the construction I'm seeing involve the
impersonal verbs: Mk. 2:26 (and, lest you call it Mark's bad Greek,
its parallel in Luke 6:4), Acts 3:21, 16:21, and Titus 1:11. It's
especially intriguing to look at Acts 16:21 first, where the relative
could be either nominative or accusative, then to go to the Mark/Luke
passage, where it can only be accusative. While we would tend to say
"(the things) are not lawful to do," (explanatory infinitive) the
Greek can only be construed "it is not lawful to do (the things)"
(subject infinitive). The English tendency seems to me to be to build
our relative clauses so that the pronoun is subject/object of the
next verb, while Greek is more flexible and the case can usually be
relied upon to make the grammatical map clear. Given the way we tend
to build our relative clauses, it becomes confusing when we have to
construe a Greek clause otherwise. Yet, I hope to maintain, we must.
I guess I've done gone and said most of what I said I didn't have
time to say. As Carl has become less certain about his analysis of
Acts 22:10, I'm also becoming less certain of mine, though I'm not
ready to abandon it yet. Maybe we should let the discussion drop for
now and just be alert in our reading for more instances to support
one view or the other.
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In Love to God and Neighbor,
Randy Leedy
Bob Jones University
Greenville, SC
RLeedy@wpo.bju.edu
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