From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Wed Jan 03 2001 - 07:03:32 EST
At 10:30 AM +0100 1/3/01, Roe wrote:
>Greetings B-Greekers,
>
>In John 20:1 it appears to me that "early, [it] still being dark" (PRWI
>SKOTIAS ETI OUSHS) modifies the clause "Mary went to the tomb" (MARIA
>ERCETAI EIS TO MNHMEION), with SKOTIAS ETI OUSHS even modifying PRWI.
>
>THi DE MIAi TWN SABBATWN MARIA hH MAGDALHNH ERCETAI PRWI SKOTIAS ETI
>OUSHS EIS TO MNHMEION KAI BLEPEI TON LIQON HRMENON EK TOU MNHMEIOU.
>
>However, a popular interlinear has translated SKOTIAS ETI OUSHS as
>"darkness yet being on it," meaning that darkness was still on (in?) the
>tomb, and not "it [the path or land] still being dark" as Mary went to
>the tomb.
>
>Do you know of other examples of this construction that would support
>one or the other reading?
If the EIS TO MNHMEION were sandwiched WITHIN the genitive absolute (so
that it reads SKOTIAS EIS TO MNHMEION ETI OUSHS) there might be some ground
for translating as the interlinear does, but that still seems quite
strange, particularly the preposition EIS. The natural way of understanding
the word-order, as I see it, is: "On the first day of the week Mary
Magdalene comes early, while it is still dark, to the tomb and sees that
the stone has been removed from the tomb." That is, EIS TO MNHMEION is most
naturally understood, I think, as completing the predicate of the clause
ERCETAI, and that the genitive absolute functions as a time-reference to
ERCETAI as EIS TO MNHMEION functions as a place-reference.
--
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://metalab.unc.edu/bgreek
You are currently subscribed to b-greek as: [jwrobie@mindspring.com]
To unsubscribe, forward this message to leave-b-greek-327Q@franklin.oit.unc.edu
To subscribe, send a message to subscribe-b-greek@franklin.oit.unc.edu
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Sat Apr 20 2002 - 15:36:45 EDT