From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Wed May 12 1999 - 12:05:10 EDT
At 11:19 AM -0400 5/12/99, Moon-Ryul Jung wrote:
>> >HN EKEI ANQRWPOS EXHRAMMENHN ECWN THN CEIRA.
>> >
>
>Carl wrote:
>>
>> Actually I think a different Greek colloquial idiom is in play here,
>> one that I've observed frequently but that I don't recall ever seeing
>> discussed in a grammar: the participle of ECW is frequently used in Greek
>> to express the notion of accompaniment or association with the subject of a
>> verb. That is why the most common idiomatic translation of Mark 3:1 is "And
>> there was a man there WITH a withered hand." The instance of this that
>> comes most readily to my mind is a sentence in a speech from
>> pseudo-Demosthenes (KATA NEAIRAS) appearing in _Reading Greek_, the
>> textbook I use to teach Beginning Attic. It is as follows:
>>
>> ... ALL' AFIKOMENOS AQHNAZE ASELGWS ECRHTO AUTHi KAI EPI TA DEIPNA ECWN
>> AUTHN PANTACOI EPOREUETO ... " ... but upon arriving in Athens, he kept
>> treating her abusively and would go anywhere to dinner parties with
>> her." ECWN AUTHN is the expression I'm referring to.
>>
>> Here's another:
>>
>> ... SUNESKEUASATO PANTA TA FRUNIWNOS EK THS OIKIAS ... ECOUSA DE TAUTA
>> PANTA ... APODIDRASKEI EIS MEGARA. " ... she gathered up everything of
>> Phrynion from his house and ran away with them to Megara." In this
>> instance the relevant expression is ECOUSA TAUTA PANTA.
>>
>>
>Thanks, Carl. Finally, Mark 3.1 makes sense to me.
> HN EKEI ANQRWPOS EXHRAMMENHN ECWN THN CEIRA.
>Based on the data you provided, I would render it as
> "There was there a man with his hand withered". (a)
>
>My first attempt was to EXHRAMMENHN as attributive, and render it as
>"There was there a man having the withered hand". (b)
>
>But then the definite expression "THE withered hand" bothered me. So,
>I thought "the withered hand" might refer to a particular kind of hand,
>which would be expressed as "a withered hand" in English. If THN allows
>this interpretation, then taking EXHRAMMENHN as attributive seems
>feasible.
>What do you think?
No, I don't really think there's any particular kind of hand indicated by
the article, but rather (as I thought I'd said in the previous post, and as
I note George Blaisdell also noted independently) I think this is the
regular idiomatic use of the article in place of a reflexive pronoun or
reflexive pronominal adjective: THN CEIRA = THN hEAUTOU CEIRA--or, the
genitive AUTOU which is already common enough in Koine and is regular in
Modern Greek = THN CEIRA AUTOU (yet I think the article is used even here
where the hand (or whatever) belongs to the subject.
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University
Summer: 1647 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/
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