Re: EIPE LOGWi Matt. and Luke
Jonathan Robie (jonathan@texcel.no)
Sun, 23 Nov 1997 07:57:49 -0500
At 02:53 PM 11/22/97 +0000, John M. Moe wrote:
>In the account of the healing of the centurion's servant, the centurion
>requests "EIPE LOGWi" (Mat. 8:8, Luke 7:7). Mary Grosvenor calls this
>a "cognate dative" and directs the reader to Max Zerwick's grammar where
>he says. "This <<internal>> or <<cognate>> dative (so called because the
>noun has the same root as the verb), although it is not entirely foreign
>to classical usage, e.g. FUGH FEUGEIN, GAMWi GAMEIN, nevertheless
>clearly rests in the NT on a Semitic basis." (Zerwick, p. 21)"
I'm really surprised nobody has responded. I talked with someone the other day who agreed with Zerwick that this is a semitism, but I wasn't clear enough on the details to post anything.
Robertson's commentary on Luke 7:7 sees this as an instrumental dative: "speak with a word". I found the phrase EIPE LOGW in only two places, the two you cite, and both are accounts of the Centurion. In the authority structure the Centurion describes, what we English speakers call "giving the word" makes sense, so I also wonder whether this might be a military usage.
Thoughts?
Jonathan