From: Moon-Ryul Jung (moon@saint.soongsil.ac.kr)
Date: Tue May 11 1999 - 09:16:30 EDT
Dear B-greekers,
I am puzzled by Mark 3.1:
HN EKEI ANQRWPOS EXHRAMMENHN ECWN THN CEIRA.
Most translations render it as
There was a man who had a withered hand. (a)
It indicates that the participle EXHRAMMENHN is taken to be
attributive, and the article THN is taken to refer to a particular
kind of hand, "THE withered hand". I sort of remember that someone
on the list said Greek article does not necessarily refer to a
definite object, but it can refer to a particular kind (which is
not so common in English, I guess). Is rendering (a) good enough in
terms of Greek grammar?
What about the literal rendering as follows?
Was there a man having the (ie., his) hand withered. (b)
I would have no problem with this rendering, especially because
Carl taught me to consider participles without article "predicative"
without clear evidence to the contrary.
The above rendering reminds me of a sentence I memorized when I learned
English grammar:
I had my hair cut (c).
This implies that I let SOMEONE cut my hair, and "have" in this
context has meaning similar to "cause". I guess that we might have
sentences like (c) even when the agent that caused the state
is not clearly in view. Does ECW have such a causative
meaning? If not, the literal rendering would mean
"There was a man possessing the (his) hand withered" (d).
(d) does not make sense to me. Any comments?
Moon-ryul Jung
Assistant Professor
Dept of Computer Science
Soongsil University,
Seoul, Korea
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