Re: Mark 1:19 kai *autous* en tw ploiw - attraction?

Carl William Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Sat, 8 Feb 1997 09:00:10 -0600 (CST)

On Fri, 7 Feb 1997, Jonathan Robie wrote:

> At 09:52 PM 2/7/97 -0600, Carl William Conrad wrote:
> >On Fri, 7 Feb 1997, Jonathan Robie wrote:
>
> > Mark 1:19 (GNT) Kai probas oligon eiden Iakwbon ton tou Zebedaiou kai
> > Iwannhn ton adelfon autou kai *autous* en tw ploiw katartizontas ta diktua
> >
> >> I remember a discussion of attraction of the pronoun earlier - is that what
> >> I'm looking at here?
> >
> >No, not really--this is repetition of the immediately preceding objects of
> >EIDEN (IAKWBON ... KAI IWANNHN) followed by an emphatic AUTOUS emphasized
> >further by an adverbial KAI: " ... saw James ... & John, them also in the
> >boat ..." I would undestand this KAI AUTOUS as clarifying that Jesus
> >encountered James and John on the coastline and on a boat just as he had
> >previously encountered Simon and Andrew. By this accounting, AUTOUS is in
> >apposition to the proper noun objects.
>
> Hmmm...I'm glad I asked. I would have missed the significance of that KAI
> AUTOUS completely. Now suppose I change the AUTOUS to AUTOI:
>
> Mark 1:19 (GNT) Kai probas oligon eiden Iakwbon ton tou Zebedaiou kai
> Iwannhn ton adelfon autou kai *autoi* en tw ploiw katartizontas ta diktua
>
> In this case, it is still grammatical, but the KAI is not adverbial, right?

No, it's no longer grammatical: now you have a NOMINATIVE that won't
construe with that PARTICIPLE in the ACCUSATIVE; that's why I suggested
the alernative view of AUTOUS ... KATARTIZONTAS as an indirect-discourse
clause functioning as a second object of EIDEN.

I have a sense that some NT grammars don't really deal with this, even if
they do take up the accusative + infinitive type clause of indirect
discourse used with a verb of speaking,etc., because it's enough like
English that it doesn't seem worth singling out for discussion--and if you
look at this whole sequence and read it as follows, it doesn't really seem
so problematic, does it?

"And he walked a bit further and saw James the son of Zebedee and his
brother John--and them [better: them also] in the boat mending (their)
nets." OR ALTERNATIVELY: "saw James ... and John, and that they were in
the boat mending their nets."
>
> Whoa! You just sent me off to the books again...this is advanced calculus
> for me. I don't think I've ever run into this before.

Is it conceivable that you've not ever run into this before? I learned
this as "Indirect Discourse," "Oratio Obliqua"--with the distinction of
two kinds of introductory verbs: verbs of "saying" taking acc. + inf.,
verbs of "perceiving" taking acc. + ptc. I suspect that this is another
instance of the NT grammarians inventing a terminology different from that
of classical Attic grammar. I'll check in the office later and see what
they call it.

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/