From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Thu Dec 16 1999 - 18:15:44 EST
<x-charset iso-8859-1>Just to piggy-back onto Carlton's note and add a couple comments, not
alternataive views:
At 5:01 PM -0600 12/16/99, Carlton Winbery wrote:
>Bill Ross wrote;
>
>>I've been too busy and have been off list for some months. Hi.
>>
>>The 3rd and 4th verses of Phillipians 4 are divided up thusly. Is there
>>another possible division?
>>
>>Philippians
>>4:3
>>NAI ERWTW KAI SE GNHSIE SUZUGE SULLAMBANOU AUTAIS AITINES EN TW EUAGGELIW
>>SUNHQLHSAN MOI META KAI KLHMENTOS KAI TWN LOIPWN SUNERGWN MOU hWN TA
>>ONOMATA EN BIBLW ZWHS
>>4:4
>>CAIRETE EN KURIW PANTOTE PALIN ERW CAIRETE
>>
>>Could you begin a sentece with hWN, as in:
>>
>>"Whose names are written in Life's Book, rejoice in the Lord always!"
>>
>>This would seem to echo Jesus:
>>
>>Luke 10:20 Notwithstanding in this rejoice not, that the spirits are
>>subject unto you; but rather rejoice, because your names are written in
>
>You could begin a sentence with a relative clause and I suppose the
>relative pronoun could be in the genitive case if its function within the
>clause demanded it though I cannot think of any instances at the moment and
>I do not have my laptop with accordance at home. However, in this instance
>it seems better to me to allow the relative to modify TWN LOIPWN SUNERGWN
>MOU.
And this gets to the real point: 4:2 and 4:3 are a single sentence or
PERIODOS; the verse-divisions may--but more often do NOT have anything to
do with the real syntactic units of a Greek sense-unit; this is one reason
why you see DE and so many other particles associated with clauses: they
are the sinews that bind the whole sequence of clauses into a whole
unit--and we really ought to read the whole unit AS a single sequence
rather than attempt to break it up into the sort of short, choppy
sentences characteristic of of most informal English prose and
conversation. The very fact that a relative pronoun is used in hWN TA
ONOMATA EN BIBLWi ZWHS is an indication that the writer did NOT consider
the clause beginning with hWN to be an independent unit; he could very
easily have written something like: EKEINWN GAR TA ONOMATA EN BIBLWI ZWHS
(ESTIN).
>>Also, there is no verb in the clause:
>>
>>hWN TA ONOMATA EN BIBLW ZWHS
>>
>>Is that proper Koine?
>>
>Yes, this is often done in the NT. The understood verb is ESTIN (with a
>neuter plural subject). The relative modifies TA ONOMATA, the subject of
>the understood verb.
This is not just the Greek of the NT but Greek of all periods, particularly
in proverbs or cliché phrases such as SKHNH PAS hO BIOS ("all life is a
stage") or Callimachus' dictum MEGA BIBLION MEGA KAKON ("a long book-poem
is a huge pain-in-the-neck"); Paul does it frequently, e.g., AGAPH
ANUPOKRITOS: "love (should be) not-play-acting" (somewhere in Romans 14).
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/
--- B-Greek home page: http://sunsite.unc.edu/bgreek You are currently subscribed to b-greek as: [cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu] To unsubscribe, forward this message to leave-b-greek-329W@franklin.oit.unc.edu To subscribe, send a message to subscribe-b-greek@franklin.oit.unc.edu</x-charset>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Sat Apr 20 2002 - 15:40:50 EDT