From: David Moore (dvdmoore@dcfreenet.seflin.lib.fl.us)
Date: Thu Feb 15 1996 - 13:14:44 EST
"Carl W. Conrad" <cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu> wrote:
>(1) If you have two article-nominative phrases athwart a copula, the second
>MAY but NEED NOT be the subject (because Greek word-order has a definite
>tendency to put the predicate word first in a noun sentence--BUT rhetorical
>emphasis can interfere at any point with that tendency so that the subject
>may be first after all for the sake of emphasis.
>(2) It may seem a grammatical heresy (at least not a theological one), but
>I don't really think it matters so much which one you consider the subject;
>the point of the construction is the equation of the two noun-phrases.
>(3) However, a third factor in this instance is the AUTOS, which does
>indeed belong to hO KATABAS. And the nominative AUTOS/AUTH/AUTO does more
>normally (but not always!) go with the subject.
>In the context, what is evident is that the writer here wants to identify
>the person refered to in the Psalm as having ascended to the height. I
>think either of the following versions would suffice:
> "It is the very one who descended that ascended ..."
> "The one who ascended ... is the very one who descended."
>Reflecting analytically over this, I guess that I would say the second
>phrase, hO ANABAS ... is the subject and the first, hO KATABAS AUTOS, is
>the predicate.
The statement, "Greek word-order has a definite tendency to put
the predicate word first in a noun sentence--BUT rhetorical emphasis can
interfere at any point with that tendency so that the subject may be first
after all for the sake of emphasis," is puzzling. First, because I'm
unclear on what is meant by "a noun sentence" (I'll assume it's a sentence
similar in structure to the one under discussion), and, second, because
sentences with this structure in the NT seem to usually use the first
arthrous noun as the subject and the second as the predicate nominative.
In a Gramcord search for nominative arthrous nouns or participles
joined by the third person of EIMI, all the sentences with a clearly
defined subject used the first noun as subject and the second as predicate
nominative. In this class were Mat 13:38; Luke 8:11; 1 Jn. 3:4; Rev.
17:18. Others were not as clear-cut, but none of these seemed to demand
using the second arthrous noun as the subject. Cf. Mat. 6:22; Mark 7:15;
Luke 11:34; Rev. 18:23.
I realize Carl has a wide scope of knowledge in Greek literature,
and I suppose his comments are based on that knowledge, but the NT
evidence doesn't seem to support the same conclusions - or is there
something I'm missing here?
David L. Moore Southeastern Spanish District
Miami, Florida of the Assemblies of God
dvdmoore@dcfreenet.seflin.lib.fl.us Department of Education
http://members.aol.com/dvdmoore
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