Re: Romans 12:15 -- anarthrous participles

Jonathan Robie (jwrobie@mindspring.com)
Mon, 25 Aug 1997 22:58:08 -0400

At 02:18 AM 8/26/97, Ben Crick wrote:

> There is something epigrammatic about XAIREIN META XAIRONTWN, KLAIEIN META
> KLAIONTWN. It is one of those Pauline epigrams, such as EMOI GAR TO ZHN
> CRISTOS KAI TO APOQANEIN KERDOS (Philippians 1:21).
>
> Or is it a sort of journalistic "headline" style, as in the anarthrous opening
> to Mark 1:1, ARCH TOU EUAGGELIOU IHSOU CRISTOU ?

Well, one distinctive feature of this verse is the infinitive used with
imperative force, which Robertson calls an "absolute infinitive". I guess it
is similar to English phrases like "smoking prohibited", though "smoking" is
not an infinitive. German has similar form that does use an infinitive, e.g.
"Rauchen verboten", "Betreten verboten".

In both English and German, the rest of the sentence that contains one of
these forms has rather weird syntax. In fact, the syntax can be weird enough
that people who write signs often can't quite get it right.

I wonder if the remaining syntax for a sentence which uses an absolute
infinitive is equally unusual in Greek?

Jonathan

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