At 05:43 AM 12/17/96 -0600, Carl W. Conrad wrote:
>At 10:25 PM -0600 12/16/96, Jonathan Robie wrote:
>>Acts 4:31 KAI DEHQENTWN AUTWN
>>
>>OK, it is a genitive aorist participle, but what does that mean? Zerwick's
>>Grammatical Analysis has a terse reference to "absolute of prayer, genitive
>>absolute". How is this phrase to be understood?
>
>Jonathan, how could you!? After all that earlier discussion of genitive
>absolutes (and even some talk about them yesterday)? This is simply "as
>they prayed."
But Carl, I *know* what a genitive absolute is and how it would be
interpreted. I just have absolutely *no* idea what an "absolute of prayer"
means.
>>Acts 4:34 PWLOUNTES
>>
>>Is this a nominative absolute?
>
>Let us not even speak of such things as nominative absolutes!
I'm not quite sure what the phrase means, frankly. I know what a genitive
absolute is, and if I pretended that this were genitive rather than
nominative, it would make good sense if I treated it as a genitive absolute:
"selling (them), they brought...". I thought I had heard the term
"nominative absolute" somewhere, so...well, what *is* a nominative absolute,
exactly?
>This is an
>ordinary circumstantial participle, in agreement with the subject ( the
>relative clause with antecedent implicit in the pronoun--'those who'--OSOI
>... KTHTORES XWRIWN H OIKIWN hUPHRXON). "Those who owned plots of land or
>houses would sell them (ptc. stands for a parallel imperfect) and bring the
>proceeds of what they had sold."
OK, thanks!
Jonathan
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