From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Sat Sep 11 1999 - 14:17:29 EDT
At 12:36 PM -0500 9/11/99, Joseph Brian Tucker wrote:
>KAQWS ESTIN DIKAION EMOI TOUTO FRONEIN hUER PANTWN hMWN DIA TO ECEIN ME EN
>THi KARDIAi hUMAS, EN TE TOIS DESMOIS MOU KAI EN THi APOLOGIAi KAI
>BEBAIWSEI TOU EUAGGELIOU SUGKOINWNOUS MOU THS CARITOS PANTAS hUMAS ONTAS.
>
>1. What does KAQWS modify?
In the first place, this verse is quite obviously not an isolated unit but
part of a unit extending at the very least from what is marked as verses
3-7. My point is simply that you may want to slice off a hunk of text to
work upon, but these verse-divisions are really often very arbitrary and
don't bear any definite relationship to where the important syntactic links
in the larger unit are. I'd say that KAQWS links this whole statement, "I
have a right to take this stance toward you because ..." to what has been
said in the entire Thanksgiving section that begins with verse 3 of chapter
1.
>2. What does DIKAION modify?
It's the predicate adjective linked by ESTIN to the subject TOUTO FRONEIN
hUPER PANTWN hUMWN.
>3. What does FRONEIN modify?
It's the subject of ESTI DIKAION EMOI.
>4. Do you agree that ONTAS is substantival, in apposition to hUMAS? If so,
>how would you translate it?
I wouldn't call it substantival at all ordinarily unless it had an article
with it, as TOUS ONTAS = "the ones who are ..." In this instance I'd take
it as circumstantial (your next question!) with the hUMAS repeated from
earlier in DIA TO ECEIN ME EN THi KARDIAi hUMAS, so that I'd convey this
whole complex as "because I hold you in my heart, inasmuch as you are, [all
that I get from ONTAS] all of you [PANTAS], my co-partners of grace, as
much in my imprisonment as in my defense and confirmation of the gospel
message."
>5. The participle ONTAS could also be circumstantial to the controlling
>verb ECEIN. Which of the specific functions of the circumstantial
>participles is found here (i.e., what type of relationship is there between
>ONTAS and ECEIN?):
>a. Condition
>b. Concession
>c. Cause
>d. Means
>e. Time
I would indeed take it that way, and I would find "Cause" to be the more
useful category here, but see my note below.
>How would you reflect your choice in the translation of the participle?
I did it above; specifically "inasmuch as you are ..." The logic of the
whole statement is: "I have a right to feel this way about you all; after
all, I hold you in my heart, all of you, since you are in fellowship with
me both in my imprisonment and in my efforts to defend and establish the
gospel message."
I just want to add a little note to the thread you started earlier on
circumstantial participles; this bears on the way you put your question in
#5 above. I think this classification of circumstantial participles into
those five categories can be USEFUL insofar as it makes you aware of the
range of senses a circumstantial participle may involve; on the other hand,
it can be MISLEADING insofar as it makes you think these are clear-cut
categories that were taught in Greek grammar schools and clearly
differentiated by careful writers of Greek. I hardly think that the speaker
or writer of Greek stopped to think whether he/she was using a
circumstantial participle in a conditional, concessive, causal,
instrumental, or temporal sense UNLESS he/she added some adverb or particle
such as KAIPER or NUN or OUPOTE. No, these categories are ones that modern
grammarians of Greek have invented for the sake of translators and the
classifications reflect ways to express in the TARGET LANGUAGE some
distinctions that normally are rarely explicit and often not even clearly
implicit in the original Greek--if that were not so, I really don't think
we'd be engaged in these efforts to classify usages that are not obvious at
once in the Greek text.
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
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/
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