From: Dennis Kenaga (dkkenaga@worldnet.att.net)
Date: Sun Feb 25 2001 - 19:36:15 EST
Dear Moon,
you said.
The above comments seem to indicate that I have confused you.
(1) I do not think TOUS OFQALMOUS to be an apposition to PNEUMA.
As Carl said, semantically speaking, the whole of PEFWTISMENOUS TOUS
OFQALMOUS corresponds to the spirit of wisdom and revelation.
The "eyes of the heart" itself is not enlightened enough to be
called the "spirit of wisdom and revelation".
(2) My question was syntactical. By carrying forward DWHi and hUMIN
from the previous clause, we have the following sentence:
DWHi hUMIN PEFWTISMENOUS TOUS OFQALMOUS.
Of course, I take PEFWTISMENOUS as predicative rather than as
attributive because of its position.
I wonder if this sentence has a similar structure to the following
English sentence:
(a) I gave him an apple rotten.
I am not sure if this sentence is grammatical in English.
The above sentence would not mean the same as
(b) I gave him a rotten apple.
(3) Even if the sentence of the form (a) is not grammatical,
would it be grammatical in Greek?
I am new to B-Greek and have no professional qualification as a
grammarian. I think that we share a similar concern about this phrase in
that we want to find out how it functions syntactically in the sentence
using standard grammar descriptions before we interpret it.
"I gave him an apple rotten." is not a regular English sentence.
"rotten" is an active intransitive participle (=which had rotted) rather
than passive. If the sentence were written in Greek, I think it would
still be attributive. PEFWTISMENOUS is passive in Eph 1:18. Passive
perfect participles governed by verbs of perception and communication in
English and Greek may be predicate or attributive. DWHi is probably not a
verb of perception or communication.
The predicate sentence "I saw the man injured" means "I was watching when
the man was being injured." The attributive sentence "I saw the injured
man" means "I saw the man who had been injured. "I consider the interview
terminated" means "I consider that the interview is now over." The
sentence "They had the tree removed" means "They caused the tree to be
removed." "We wanted it found" means "We wanted it to be found." "John
likes the carrots cooked" means that John likes them to be cooked rather
than raw. "You found the cart turned over" usually means "You discovered
that the cart was turned over." In these cases, the passive participle is
in the predicate position and makes a predicate type of assertion.
The majority of perfect participles cannot be used correctly with many
verbs in the "predicate" position. In modern English, we cannot say "John
owns the mower repaired." or "Mary took a trip extended."
However, in English and Greek, there is a smaller number of passive
participles in the "predicate" position that appear to be attributive in
nature, not fitting into neat categories. "She has the memo written"
means that she has written (periphrastic) the memo and has it available to
deliver. Some more examples of predicate perfect passive participles are:
"I saw the dish broken in pieces." "He has a dish covered with gold." "He
left a note written in red ink." "The police brought the prisoner bound
and gagged." "He keeps the office organized."
In spite of the fact that these passive participles are in "predicate"
position, I think that they function primarily as attributive modifiers of
direct objects. Their expanded adjectival forms in relative clauses would
be: "which was broken," "that had been written," "who was bound." They
are stylistic forms. "Dish covered with gold" is probably the same as
"gold-covered dish." But "bound" may also have an adverbial element
describing the manner in which they brought him in.
Greek predicate modifiers are all anarthrous. Anarthrous modifiers of
anarthrous substantives may be predicate or attributive. Let's leave
those more contextual cases aside. Our instance PEFWTISMENOUS TOUS
OFQALMOUS has an anarthrous modifier of an articular substantive, which is
always "predicate" in form. However, they are apparently sometimes
"attributive" in function. Which one is Eph 1:18?
Searching the whole N.T. I found only 38 instances of accusative
articular substantives modified by anarthrous perfect passive participles.
26 of these were governed by verbs of perception: e.g. IDWN, EURON,
BLEPEI, KATENOJSEN. 2 had the participle in the first predicate position,
and 24 were in the second position, e.g. Acts 7:56 QEWRW TOUS OURANOUS
DIJNOIGMENOUS.
Of the remaining 11 (besides Eph 1:18), one (RM 9:25) was governed by the
double accusative verb KALEW. The other 10 instances appear to me to be
direct objects of transitive verbs where the participle functions as an
attribute, even though the position is formally "predicate."
MK 3: 1, MK 8:17, JN17:13, HB 5:14, HB 9: 4, HB10: 2, RV14: 1 are governed
by ECW.
MT27:37, AC22: 5 and AC24:27 are governed by EPEQJKAN, AXWN and KATELIPE.
Now we can consider your proposed sentence:
DWHi hUMIN PEFWTISMENOUS TOUS OFQALMOUS. Do you consider the clause
PEFWTISMENOUS TOUS OFQALMOUS to be the direct object of DWHi?
Most likely DWHi is not a verb of perception or communication, like the
26 N.T. examples. Also it is not too much like the other 10 N.T.
examples. If it were like them, TOUS OFQALMOUS would be direct object of
DWHi, and PEFWTISMENOUS would be an attribute of the direct object. It
might be translated "may grant you eyes of the heart that have been
illuminated." In other words it would be equivalent to DWHi hUMIN TOUS
PEFWTISMENOUS OFQALMOUS. I am guessing that you do not accept this
attributive interpretation of the "predicate" form, although I am not
sure. In that case, the phrase is unique in form and does not have any
formal N.T. parallel.
Here is an alternate sentence. DWHi hUMIN PEFWTISMENOUS (EINAI) TOUS
OFQALMOUS. If this were put in a subordinate clause it would be DWHi
hUMIN hINA PEFWTISMENOUS (WSIN/GENWNTO) TOUS OFQALMOUS. This periphrastic
statement would be translated "may grant you that the eyes of your heart
be illuminated."
Please examine Acts 10:40 which has an equative infinitival clause as
direct object of DIDWMI. TOUTON hO QEOS hHGEIREN TH TRITH hHMERA KAI
EDWKEN AOUTON EMFANH GENESQAI. NASB translates it "God raised Him up on
the third day and granted that He become visible." It could also be
translated "granted Him to become visible". If we substituted the passive
perfect participle PEFANERWMENON for the adjective EMFANH we would have a
similar construction. Then if we removed the equative infinitive GENESQAI
we would have a predicate construction just like Eph 1: 18.
Acts 14:3 has a construction with DIDWMI and a clause as direct object,
somewhat similar to Acts 10:40. Later in Eph 4:11 Paul uses DIDWMI again
with accusatives as objects. KAI AUTOS EDWKEN TOUS MEN APOSTOLOUS,... This
time the equative infinitive is not present. NASB translates it as "gave
some as apostles..." This is good. But it is also possible to understand
EINAI and translate it as "granted that some might be apostles..." or
"granted some to be apostles..." Although we are dealing here with two
substantives instead of a substantive and a modifier, the construction is
otherwise similar to Eph 1:18.
Instances of DIDWMI (granting) with the infinitive: Matt 13:11, Lk 1:73,
Lk 22:29, Acts 4:29, Acts 14:3, Rom 15:5, Eph 3:16, Philp 1:29, 2Tim 1:18,
Rev 2:7, Rev 3:21, Rev 6:4, Rev 7,2. Instances of DIDWMI (granting) with
hINA Mk 10:37
According to A.T. Robertson "A Grammar of the Greek N.T. in the Light of
Historical Research" page 1123 under participles-indirect discourse "The
presence or absence of the copula does not materially change the
construction when an adjective or substantive is the second accusative"
Dennis Kenaga
Lansing Michigan
---
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 - 15:36:51 EDT