Re: Re: have

Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Sun, 24 Aug 1997 06:58:31 -0500

At 10:11 PM -0500 8/23/97, Ben Crick wrote:
>On Sat 23 Aug 97 (15:32:11), rleedy@bju.edu wrote:
>>  ... ... I don't think a purely Greek analysis of these expressions is
>> possible, inasmuch as hUPARCEIN construed with the dative has a very
>> Semitic ring to it, parallel to HYH plus the L preposition. ... ...
>
> It suddenly occurred to me that there is something Slavonic about this too.
> In Russian "to have" is HMyETb; but often the preposition Y (oo) is used
> with the Genitive personal pronoun, "to be" understood: Y MyENyA KNHGA, I
>have
> a book, rather than HMyEyU KNHGY. This parallels the Semitic HaYaH LiY
>SePheR.
>
> Just my $0.02

The PARALLEL with the Semitic need not be disputed; the question, however,
is whether the idiom DERIVES from the Hebrew, and I think the evidence on
this score is simply lacking. Greek has a dative of possession with the
verb EINAI from very early times, as Latin has it with ESSE; my guess is
that it's probably already Proto-Indo-European. And that's why, I think,
Randy's check of our major authorities for NT usage didn't turn up any
references to Semitism where this construction was dealt with.

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics/Washington University
One Brookings Drive/St. Louis, MO, USA 63130/(314) 935-4018
Home: 7222 Colgate Ave./St. Louis, MO 63130/(314) 726-5649
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu OR cconrad@yancey.main.nc.us
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/