From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Mon Mar 16 1998 - 19:58:50 EST
At 6:07 AM -0600 3/16/98, clayton stirling bartholomew wrote:
>Carl,
>
>Would you say that this sort of separation between the attributive adjectival
> participle and POTHRION is a normal thing in literary Greek?
>
>One of the draw backs of reading Koine Greek almost exclusively is that
>authors like Luke and the author of Hebrews seem to do strange things, which
>if viewed in terms of literary Greek style of earlier times are not really
>strange, but when viewed against the background of John's Gospel look rather
>bizarre.
>
>My question:
>
>Is the separation between ECCUNNOMENON and POTHRION one of these kinds of
>issues or is this separation even startling for someone who has read a lot of
>literary Greek?
I don't find it at all odd, but I would add that I have always understood
this particular kind of construction, an add-on attributive
adjective/participle, as very similar in nature to an appositive. Compare:
hO ANHR hO AGAQOS = "the man, i.e. the good one"
TOUTO TO POTHRION ... TO hUPER hUMWN EKCUNNOMENON = "this cup, i.e.
the
one poured out on your behalf"
One of the beauties of Greek, albeit one that tends to disturb moderns who
think that function is or ought to be determined by word-order and close
proximity, is that related elements are clearly marked even when
considerably separated from each other; in this instance it is the TO that
clearly refers back to the neuter singular POTHRION that constitutes the
key to comprehension. Let me illustrate this point, if I may, by a couple
lines of Latin hexameter verse from Lucretius:
OMNIA NOS ITIDEM DEPASCIMUR AUREA DICTA,
AUREA, PERPETUA SEMPER DIGNISSIMA VITA.
This is addressed by the poet to his "savior" Epicurus with all the fervor
of a true-believing convert who equates the philosophic principles of his
master to the oracles of Apollo:
"Even so (i.e. like bees on clover) we browse on all your golden
sayings, golden ones, forever most deserving of endless life."
In the first line above OMNIA AUREA DICTA, although construed together as
the neuter accusative plural object of DEPASCIMUR, are separated--or at
least OMNIA at the beginning of the line is separated from AUREA DICTA; in
the second line we have an anaphoric AUREA, then, also neuter plural
accusative in agreement with it and with AUREA DICTA, we have DIGNISSIMA;
now, if one were unable to scan the meter and recognize that the -A ending
on PERPETUA and VITA is long, and that these words are therefore ablative,
one might have some confusion about which of these words ending in -A
belongs to which and how they construe with each other. This sort of
interlacing and separation of substantives and attributes is not uncommon
in either Latin or Greek poetry, and it is certainly not uncommon in
rhetorical Greek prose either. And lest you think I am talking about Greek
and Latin poetry and only classical Greek prose, consider this example in 1
Cor 2:7 ALLA LALOUMEN QEOU SOFIAN EN MUSTHRIWi THN APOKEKRUMMENHN ... Here
THN APOKEKRUMMENHN is an attributive participle in agreement with
SOFIAN--and the construction, so far as I can see, is exactly parallel to
that in Luke 22:20 TOUTO TO POTHRION hH KAINH DIAQHKH EN TWi hAIMATI MOU TO
hUPER hUMWN EKCUNNOMENON ... in which TO hUPER hUMWN EKCUNNOMENON is an
attributive participle to be construed with TOUTO TO POTHRION, despite the
intervening material.
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics/Washington University
One Brookings Drive/St. Louis, MO, USA 63130/(314) 935-4018
Home: 7222 Colgate Ave./St. Louis, MO 63130/(314) 726-5649
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu OR cconrad@yancey.main.nc.us
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/
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