From: DWILKINS@ucrac1.ucr.edu
Date: Sun Jul 28 1996 - 16:39:54 EDT
I made a confusing (or perhaps just stupid) comment at the end of my previous
post in reply to Carlton Winbery, and my apologies to the list and to Carlton
in particular. When I said that we should expect AUTWi to be in the nominative
if the construction was simply "he will be forgiven", making the comparison to
Matt 5:6, I was speaking of a general principle and had not adequately done my
homework. In fact, AFIHMI in the sense of "forgive" seems to always have the
person in the dative, so even when there is no explicit subject for the verb i
n
the passive, the dative of the person forgiven is used, not the nominative.
The question would be whether the verb is ever used in an impersonal sense for
the "forgive" meaning. After looking at such passages as Mark 4:12 and several
verses in Lev. (LXX), however, I would still maintain that there is at least
an implicit subject of the thing forgiven, as I think we find in Luke 12:10.
True, Mark 4:12 and similar passages are usually translated "they (will) be
forgiven" as if the dative person were the subject, but this is just a smoother
way to translate the verb (vis-a-vis "it will be forgiven them").
Don Wilkins
UC Riverside
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Sat Apr 20 2002 - 15:37:46 EDT