>At 08:28 AM 1/24/97 -0600, Carl W. Conrad wrote:
>>At 5:58 AM -0600 1/24/97, Jonathan Robie wrote:
>>>OK, I'm moving on to the next chapter! In Ephesians 2:1, hUMAS is
accusative:
>>>
>>>Eph 2:1 (GNT) KAI hUMAS ONTAS NEKROUS TOIS PARAPTWMASIN KAI TAIS
hAMARTIAIS
>>>hUMWN
>
>>The accusative of respect, at least in traditional grammatical
terminology,
>>tends to be used of accusatives qualifying adjectives or verbs
denoting a
>>state to denote a thing in respect to which the verb or adjective is
limited
>>(Smyth, #1601); Wallace seems to be using the term in an
idiosyncratic sense
>>including limiting functions of an accusative noun that can't be
explained
>>otherwise. But Ephesians 2:1 hUMAS ONTAS KTL. is not an accusative of
respect.
>
>I may be misunderstanding the accusative of respect. I was thinking
that the
>accusative of respect might lead to a translation like:
>
>"And as for you, you were dead in your sins and transgressions,
following
>the age of this world, following the prince of the powers of the air,
the
>spirit which now works in those who are disobedient."
>
>Is this wildly off the mark?
Yes, I really think it IS "wildly off the mark"--at least as regards an
"accusative of respect." In fact, there's something backward,
cart-before-horse, so to speak, about thinking of it in terms of the
translation it might produce. Here's a "classic" (as well as classical
Attic) Accusative of Respect: in the Oedipus Tyrannos, Teiresias is
told by Oedipus:
TUFLOS TA T' WTA TON TE NOUN TA T' OMMAT' EI
"Blind at ears and at mind and at eyes are you."
The three accusatives are clarifiers of the adjective TUFLOS, "blind."
They <underline>specify</underline> in what respect Teiresias is
blind.
In Eph 2:1 one might argue that hUMAS is an accusative of respect only
if it relates somehow to an adjective or an intransitive verb that it
helps to clarify--and there's nothing in what follows to link it to
(which is why some people want to make this whole clause an "accusative
absolute"), but as I said previously, I really think that hUMAS ONTAS
KTL. in 2:1 <underline>anticipates</underline> and <underline>is
resumed by</underline> hHMAS ONTAS KTL. in 2:5. The sentence is an
anacoluthon--its syntax (in terms of its initial structure) is broken
off and recommenced in 2:5.
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/