Re: EIS+verb EIS

Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Sat, 8 Nov 1997 07:39:45 -0600

At 4:05 AM -0600 11/8/97, Paul S. Dixon wrote:
>Don, Jeff, et al:
>
>Thanks for your responses. Yes, I think you are both probably right in
>that there is no particular emphasis with the repetition of the
>preposition, as in EISHLQEN EIS.
>
>For your information, I did check for EISHLQEN with no accompanying
>repeated EIS anywhere else in the sentence (either before or after
>EISHLQEN). It does occur 11 times, interestingly 7 times in Lukan
>literature, once in Hebrews, once in Mark, and twice in Johannine
>literature. Since Luke and Hebrews are perhaps closest to Classical
>Greek in style, am wondering if this phenomenon (no repetition of the
>preposition in an EIS+verb construction) is not especially prevalent in
>Classical Greek. Or, another to put it, is the repetition of the
>preposition a later development in the Greek language?

No, I think you're right, Paul. I think it is more common in the classical
Attic (it could be checked easily enough, although I haven't done it). I
think the logic (not in YOUR sense, Paul!) of the development is as follows:

Stage 1: HLQEN hO IHSOUS EIS THN OIKIAN -- "Jesus went INTO THE HOUSE."
Here HLQEN is an intransitive verb and its meaning is completed by the
prepositional phrase. Cf. German: "Jesus ging ins Haus"

Stage 2: EISHLQEN hO IHSOUS EIS THN OIKIAN -- "Jesus entered into the
house." Here EISHLQEN is still an intransitive verb (as "enter" MAY BE but
usually is NOT in English) that has gained some specificity by the addition
of the prefix,which is much like a separable-prefix German verb; cf.
German: "Ins Haus ist Jesus eingegangen." This, I think, is classical Greek
of the fifth and fourth centuries, and it is, I surmise, what
better-educated Hellenistic writers like Luke and the author of Hebrews
continued to write.

Stage 3: EISHLQEN hO IHSOUS THN OIKIAN -- "Jesus entered the house." Here
EISHLQEN has become a transitive verb that takes a direct object (THN
OIKIAN)

This is a purely hypothetical reconstruction, but if I were a betting man,
I'd put money on it that this is how it happened.

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/