From: Scott Sherwood (scottsherwoodjobsearch@yahoo.com)
Date: Wed Aug 04 1999 - 10:13:39 EDT
I've seen ( in Loeb library text )ancient Greek and Latin terms for
what we call verbs, adverbs, nouns, and adjectives; and I've seen terms
here that I'd never seen before like apodosis and paratactic.
It seems there was a fully developed ancient Greek grammatical argot.
As a relative newcomer to Greek, wouldn't I be better off trying to use
those terms/definitions for analysis than the modern American grammar
terms I learned in school?
Would B-Greek as a whole be better off if we could all use those terms?
Is there a good/best source, modern or ancient, that sets out and
explains those ancient terms and concepts?
Are the ancient terms in any way wrong? Do they incorrectly describe
ancient Greek grammar? Was it not a workable system for the ancients?
I've read some old English books (1500's AD) on parsing Greek. Is
there some more modern source that could (mostly in English) explain
the ancient parsing technique using the ancient terms? As I said, I
think I've seen ancient Latin authorities on Greek grammar, so I think
the information is out there somewhere; I think I'd have an easier time
understanding the system if I could escape the modern grammatical
mindset for a time.
Thanks,
Scott Sherwood
Massachusetts
--- "Carl W. Conrad" <cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu> wrote:
> Perhaps this is not worth the effort, since it
> appears that we all seem to
> be in agreement about the implied sense of the
> nominative DIDASKALOS in the
> verse, but the longer I reflect over the matter, I
> find myself wondering
> whether perhaps we haven't transformed the question
> from one of how we
> understand the Greek grammar to one of how best to
> express the intended
> sense of the Greek in English grammar. Perhaps I'm
> wrong about this, but
> I'd like to pursue the question a bit further. Here
> are the original
> question and the three responses to date:
>
> >At 5:22 PM +1000 8/2/99, Richard A. Creighton
> wrote:
> >>How is the nominative DIDASKALOS functioning in
> John 3:2?
> >>
> >>RABBI, OIDAMEN hOTI APO QEOU ELHLUQAS DIDASKALOS
>
> At 6:29 AM -0400 8/2/99, Carl W. Conrad wrote:
> >It is a predicate nominative, in agreement with the
> subject implicit in the
> >verb, and functioning adverbially: "... we know
> that you have come AS A
> >TEACHER."
>
> At 11:54 AM -0400 8/2/99, Kevin W. Woodruff wrote:
> >Predicate nominative of an implied EIMI
>
> At 2:42 PM -0500 8/2/99, Carlton Winbery wrote:
> >Richard, I read both Carl's and Kevin's answer to
> this and they make good
> >sense, but I like to take a simpler route that
> produces the same result. I
> >like to see DIDASKALOS as in apposition to the
> subject of the verb
> >ELHLUQAS. A noun (or implied noun or pronoun) in
> any case can have another
> >noun (or noun substitute) in the same case in
> apposition. Hence, "We know
> >that you, a teacher, have come from God." It's like
> we do in English when
> >we say "this is my brother, Joe."
>
> Where we agree is in relating the nominative
> DIDASKALOS to the subject of
> ELHLUQAS; where we disagree, I think, is in how we
> understand the
> relationship of DIDASKALOS to the verb ELHLUQAS. I
> really think that
> DIDASKALOS functions adverbially with ELHLUQAS,
> i.e., our clause is
> equivalent in meaning to ELHLUQAS hINA DIDASKHiS (or
> hINA DIDAXHiS). At any
> rate, it seems to me that the RSV's "We know that
> you are a teacher come
> from God" rightly underscores the tightness of this
> association of ELHLUQAS
> and DIDASKALOS although it seems to introduce a
> copula ("you are") that is
> not actually present in the Greek; personally I
> think this is one of GJn's
> very distinctive stative perfects that emphasizes
> both present state and
> the underlying verbal basis of that present state. I
> think that Paul
> expresses a very similar notion in Gal 1:1 PAULOS
> APOSTOLOS OUK AP'
> ANQRWPWN OUDE DI' ANQRWPWN ALLA DIA IHSOU CRISTOU
> KAI QEOU PATROS TU
> EGEIRANTOS AUTON EK NEKRWN, where APOSTOLOS has so
> powerful a verbal
> (almost participial = APOSTALEIS?) force that,
> although a noun, it is
> qualified by adverbial prepositional phrases.
>
> It seems to me, moreover, that both Kevin's
> understanding and Carlton's
> understanding of the grammatical function of
> DIDASKALOS fall short of
> recognizing its adverbial relationship to ELHLUQAS,
> and I am strongly
> inclined to think (admittedly this is very
> subjective, a matter of feel for
> "natural" Greek expression) that the construction as
> understood by Kevin
> and Carlton might require different formulation in
> the Greek.
>
> (a: Kevin): If DIDASKALOS is predicate nominative of
> an implied EIMI, I
> rather think that the Greek would more normally have
> a participial form of
> EIMI, namely WN: OIDAMEN hOTI DIDASKALOS WN
> ELHLUQAS. Compare GJn 1:6
> EGENETO ANQRWPOS APESTALMENOS PARA QEOU, ONOMA AUTWi
> IWANNHS. I'm a little
> bit more ready to accept Kevin's interpretation,
> however, because I think
> it IS conceivable that the participial WN is
> elliptical and because the
> adverbial relationship of DIDASKALOS to ELHLUQAS
> remains intact thus; my
> inclination is to think that WN would NOT have been
> omitted here, but my
> inclination may be more a matter of what I think
> would have obtained in
> classical Attic.
>
> (b: Carlton): If DIDASKALOS is an appositive to the
> subject of ELHLUQAS,
> then it seems to me that the subject of ELHLUQAS
> ought rather to be
> _explicit_ rather than implicit, and I'm inclined to
> think we'd more likely
> have OIDAMEN hOTI SU DIDASKALOS ELHLUQAS APO QEOU.
> Would the SU remain
> suppressed, if it must be emphatic enough to call
> for an appositive?
> Compare GJn 1:19-22: (19) SU TIS EI? (20) EGW OUK
> EIMI hO CRISTOS. (21) SU
> ELIAS EI? ... hO PROFHTHS EI SU? In these instances
> the pronominal subject
> is emphatic and explicit, and I think it would be
> also in GJn 3:2.
> Moreover, I think if this were comparable to
> English, "This is my brother,
> Joe," we'd have to have a hOUTOS in the analogous
> Greek, or else something
> more like GJn 1:6 where ANQRWPOS is almost
> pronominal, like an earlier
> Greek indefinite TIS, but in this instance the
> apposition is appended in a
> clause of its own: EGENETO ANQRWPOS APESTALMENOS
> PARA QEOU, ONOMA AUTWi
> IWANNHS. Might we imagine this expressed as ANQRWPOS
> IWANNHS APESTALMENOS
> HN PARA QEOU? Certainly that would be intelligible
> Greek, but I think that
> what we're actually given in 1:6 is a much more
> carefully-phrased statement
> of the missionary status of John, and then the
> appositional indication of
> his name follows separately with its own verb.
>
> Perhaps this is all too much a matter of
> indistinguishable nuances of
> interpretation of the Greek of John 3:2, but the
> crux of the matter, in my
> view, is whether we understand an adverbial
> relationship of DIDASKALOS to
> the verb ELHLUQAS or not. I don't think the use of
> the perfect tense in
> that verb is a casual one.
>
>
> 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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