From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Mon Oct 09 2000 - 09:03:15 EDT
At 8:35 AM -0400 10/9/00, Bill Combs wrote:
>I would like to know how those on the list would translate this phrase
>from 1 Tim 6:5:
>DIAPARATRIBAI DIEPHTHARMENWN ANTHRWPWN TON NOUN
>
>But more important what kind of genitives would you say DIEPHTHARMENWN and
>ANTHRWPWN are?
something like: "the endless academic small-talk of people who've let their
minds go to rot." This comes pretty close to my definition of the perpetual
graduate student who never completes a degree but manages to stay
affiliated with one academic institution or another.
I'd call it a simple possessive genitive, subjective (if you like)) since I
would understand the people described by that participial phrase as the
ones carrying on the DIAPARATRIBAI.
Incidentally this is an excellent illustration of one of the things I've
been urging about middle-passive voice forms. The old-fashioned (but far
from dead) way of understanding DIEFQARMENWN ANQRWPWN TON NOUN is to
explain DIEFQARMENWN as a pf. passive participle and TON NOUN as an
"accusative of specification"--and then to translate the phrase something
like, "of persons corrupted with regard to the mind." Far simpler to
understand the participle as middle-reflexive and TON NOUN as its direct
object: the persons thus described have brought about the
ruination/atrophy/degeneration upon their own minds.
--
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
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