From: Carl William Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Fri Feb 06 1998 - 13:31:10 EST
On Thu, 5 Feb 1998, Kevin Anderson wrote:
> I am having a bit of difficulty in unravelling the following portion of 2
> Macc 7:14:
>
> hAIRETON METALLASSONTAS hUP' ANQRWPWN TAS hUPO TOU QEOU PROSDOKAN ELPIDAS
> PALIN ANASTHSESQAI hUP' AUTOU
>
> I presume that hAIRETON is a verbal adjective indicating necessity, "one
> must choose." After some head-scratching, rifling LSJ (which was of little
> help), and a search of occurrences in the LXX, I also discovered that
> METALLASSW is invariably used in 2 Macc to refer to death. Hence: "one must
> choose dying at the hands of men...." But then does one take the following
> infinitive PROSDOKAN as purposive (or consecutive?): "one must choose dying
> at the hands of men in order to expect the hopes [given] by God to be raised
> again by him." Or is the choice between two coordinate things?: "one must
> choose dying at the hands of men [and] the hopes [given] by God to expect to
> be raised again by him."
>
> I would appreciate any assistance that anyone can give me.
Yes, hAIRETON is a verbal adjective; usually these are passive in sense
and there are two different kinds, one in -TEOS that operate like Latin
gerundives and imply obligation or necessity, the other in -TOS that
indicate possibility to be x'ed (x being whatever the verb is). In this
instance I think that hAIRETON is a predicate adjective to be construed
with the infinitive PROSDOKAN and an implicit ESTI; then I'd take
METALLASSONTAS with an implicit hHMAS serving as subject of the infinitive
PROSDOKAN. As for METALLASSW, this was already a classical Attic euphemism
for death, something like "make the transition," or "pass over from one
state to another." Putting these elements together, I'd get:
hAIRETON METALLASSONTAS hUP' ANQRWPWN TAS hUPO TOU QEOU PROSDOKAN
ELPIDAS PALIN ANASTHSESQAI hUP' AUTOU
"It is choiceworthy (choosable) if/when (we are) facing death at
the hands of men, to look forward to the hopes (given us) by God
to be resurrected again by him."
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University
One Brookings Drive, St. Louis, MO, USA 63130
(314) 935-4018
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu OR cwc@oui.com
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/
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