I wrote:
>It's not that I thought the construction was "extraordinary", just unusual.
>I'm not sure that the attributive pattern
>article-substantive-article-attributive-attributive is all that common in the
>NT, but I could well be hopelessly wrong!
As Carl rightly points out, it seems natural to read the phrase TOU ENESTWTOS
PONHROU not as a multiple attributive in second attributive position, but as a
substantival phrase in apposition to TOU AIWNOS. This indeed would not be an
unusual construction and my phrasing was unfortunate. But if this is so, why
the textual variant and why does BDF regard this construction as "harsher"? Am
I missing something here?
>I'm sorry, but my question was very poorly phrased. It was really prompted by
>the textual variant. Let me try again. What syntactic/stylistic reasons would
>motivate the scribal change from
>
>EK TOU AIWNOS TOU ENESTWTOS PONHROU
>to
>EK TOU ENESTWTOS AIWNOS PONHROU?
>
>Having now got hold of BDF, I see that the former phrase is described without
>further explanation as "harsher" (269(5)). This seems to be scratching where
>I'm itching. But in what sense is it "harsher"?
Thanks,
John