Re: Rev 8:9 TA ECONTA
Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Thu, 25 Sep 1997 19:40:53 -0500
At 7:00 PM -0500 9/25/97, Jonathan Robie wrote:
>At 04:49 PM 9/25/97 -0700, lakr wrote:
>>>
>>> I'm confused by what seems to be a lack of agreement in Rev 8:9:
>>>
>>> Rev 8:9 KAI APEQANEN TO TRITON TWN KTISMATWN TWN EN THi QALASSHi, *TA*
>>> *ECONTA* PSUCAS, KAI TO TRITON TWN PLOIWN DEFQARHSAN.
>>> Rev 8:9 And a third of the creatures in the sea that had life died, and a
>>> third of the ships were destroyed.
>>>
>>> TA ECONTA is nominative...but shouldn't it be genitive? I was thinking that
>>> it refers back to TWN TKISMATWN. Does it refer to something else?
>>
>>
>>Could it not refer back to TO TRITON ?
>
>If it referred to TO TRITON, wouldn't that mean that only one-third of the
>creatures in the sea were living?
Even if it did refer back to TO TRITON, the principle of agreement would be
violated, since TA ECONTA YUCAS is plural nominative while TO TRITON is
singular. I think Larry's right. "Standard" Greek, or writers better
schooled in Greek, probably would have made it TWN ECONTWN YUCAS, but there
are numerous grammatical irregularities in Revelation and some NT Grammars
even have lists of such irregularities that are not infrequent in this
particular NT document.
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
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