From: Randy Leedy (Rleedy@bju.edu)
Date: Wed Dec 05 2001 - 16:39:50 EST
>>> "Carl W. Conrad" <cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu> 12/05/01 04:31PM >>>
Well, it's customary to call KEIMAI and it's cognates a "deponent"
verb; to
be sure it's often said (especially with regard to classical Attic)
that
KEIMAI and its compounds are functional passives to TIQHMI and its
compounds, so that PROKEIMAI might be envisioned as a functional
middle-passive of PROTIQHMI and take DEIGMA as an accusative OBJECT:
translating as a middle most literally it would be: "have set
themselves
forth as an example [have put on display their monstrous example],
undergoing punishment of eternal fire."
So the "outrage" lies in seeing PROKEINTAI as a middle that can take
a
direct object. and the accusative is DEIGMA as direct object of
PROKEINTAI
(if one is willing to accept the "outrage").
<<<
Yes, and "have set themselves forth as" seems to me to be essentially
a copula, taking "themselves" as reflecting the middle voice rather
than an understood accusative. If I may deal just with the root
KEIMAI, "to lie," wouldn't you expect an expression like "He lies
dead" to use NEKROS, nominative? Revelation 16:21 has "The city lies
foursquare": hH POLIS TETRAGWNOS KEITAI. So I'm still not quite ready
to give up the nominative in the construction you suggest.
Perhaps I should reiterate that I do realize that this point is a
pretty arcane one, and probably not worth going on with, but to me it
is a fun one to consider. And I do find in teaching that students
sometimes have difficulty understanding that the nominative can
complete verbs other than EIMI, GINOMAI, and hUPARCW, so the
significance of properly understanding constructions such as this one
is not by any means limited to this passage.
Randy Leedy
Bob Jones University
Greenville, SC
RLeedy@bju.edu
---
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 - 15:37:13 EDT