From: dalmatia@eburg.com
Date: Sun Mar 15 1998 - 11:50:32 EST
Carl W. Conrad wrote:
> The strangest such expression I think I've ever run into is a recurrent
> formula in Aristotle, who creates a substantive by sticking a TO in front
> of the indirect question TI HN EINAI, "to be what it was"--so TO TI HN
> EINAI becomes a noun that Aristotle manipulates as the subject or object of
> a verb or the object of a preposition.
Hello Carl ~
I remember struggling with this one some 25 years ago at SDSU in Ted
Warren's classes ~ The books, as you know, all translate it as
'essence', but I wanted the 'flavor' of the originl, so I just
transliterated it and came up with 'The WHAT it was being to
be[come]'. 'Essence', in comparison, has greatly diminished vitality,
being almost dead, and effectively kills Aristotle's forceful
focus... 'Latin-holes' it, so to speak...
> Now we readily understand that there's no significant difference of meaning
> between TO KATA MEROS, the substantival adverb, and KATA MEROS, the
> prepositional phrase used adverbially. It's just that in the course of
> linguistic change these articular adverbs tended to grow ever more
> common--and I'm not really convinced that the form with TO is really any
> more emphatic than the form without it.
See my just previous posting on the neuter article, Rom9:5. Au
Contraire!!! It makes ALL the difference ~ If the TO were not there,
Paul would be less that truthful, and the passage would lie... When
Paul avers his truthfulness in Christ, he is obligated to dot his 'i's
and cross his 't's. He dots the 'i' with EX, and crosses the 't' with
TO, and thereby introduces the text that follows. Reading Paul seems
a lot like doing the NY Times thematic crossword puzzle ~ Just as fun
~ More rewarding...
George Blaisdell
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