I have neither experience nor evidence at hand, but I did think of the issue in the way Iver described it, but I don't consider "the rain rains" to be exactly the same.cwconrad wrote:(1) I don't think that our way of Englishing it as "... the life I now live" provides the answer to your question, nor do I think that this ὃ should be understood as any sort of direct object of the verb ζῶ or of ἀπέθανον in the second example; I think it's more akin to the usage of ὅτι as a pronominal conjunction introducing substantive clauses;
[...]
All I can say at this point is that it appears to me to be a device for substantivizing a finite verb somewhat comparable to the function of ὅτι or an English that meaning "the fact that" or a Latin quod or a German dasß or a French que; each of these is in origin a relative pronoun pressed into service as a pronominal conjunction introducing a substantive clause, where the pronominal conjunction bears a meaning somewhat like English "the fact that ... " or "as for the fact that ... " or "regarding the fact that ... " That is to say, the pronoun is an accusative of respect. So, "as for the fact that I am alive," (the explanation is that) I am alive in flesh and "as for the fact that I died, (the explanation is that) I died a single time to sin." That's my tentative account of this; I gladly await what the linguists have to say about it.
Another one I just found is "ὑπνῶσαι", normally intransitive, in:
[LXX Psa 76:5] ἐταράχθησαν πάντες οἱ ἀσύνετοι τῇ καρδίᾳ ὕπνωσαν ὕπνον αὐτῶν καὶ οὐχ εὗρον οὐδὲν πάντες οἱ ἄνδρες τοῦ πλούτου ταῖς χερσὶν αὐτῶν
[LXX Jer 51:39] ἐν τῇ θερμασίᾳ αὐτῶν δώσω πότημα αὐτοῖς καὶ μεθύσω αὐτούς ὅπως καρωθῶσιν καὶ ὑπνώσωσιν ὕπνον αἰώνιον καὶ οὐ μὴ ἐγερθῶσι λέγει κύριος
Here the object is explicit and certainly not adverbial.
And how about the following?
[LXX Gen 37:5,6,9,10] ἐνυπνιασθεὶς δὲ ιωσηφ ἐνύπνιον ἀπήγγειλεν αὐτὸ τοῖς ἀδελφοῖς αὐτοῦ καὶ εἶπεν αὐτοῖς ἀκούσατε τοῦ ἐνυπνίου τούτου οὗ ἐνυπνιάσθην ...
I doubt "dream" accepts any direct object except "dreams" (which occurs quite a number of times in the LXX).
There are quite a few other examples we have come across here on B-Greek but concerning different issues:
[1 John 5:10] ὁ πιστεύων εἰς τὸν υἱὸν τοῦ θεοῦ ἔχει τὴν μαρτυρίαν ἐν αὑτῷ· ὁ μὴ πιστεύων τῷ θεῷ ψεύστην πεποίηκεν αὐτόν, ὅτι οὐ πεπίστευκεν εἰς τὴν μαρτυρίαν ἣν μεμαρτύρηκεν ὁ θεὸς περὶ τοῦ υἱοῦ αὐτοῦ.
"τὴν μαρτυρίαν" is the object of "μεμαρτύρηκεν" but it seems that "μαρτυρῆσαι" is usually used in the form "μαρτυρῆσαι ὅτι ..." (like in 1 John 1:2, 4:14, 5:9) and only accepts as direct objects entire "μαρτυρίας".
[1 John 5:16] ἐάν τις ἴδῃ τὸν ἀδελφὸν αὐτοῦ ἁμαρτάνοντα ἁμαρτίαν μὴ πρὸς θάνατον, αἰτήσει, καὶ δώσει αὐτῷ ζωήν, τοῖς ἁμαρτάνουσιν μὴ πρὸς θάνατον. ἔστιν ἁμαρτία πρὸς θάνατον· οὐ περὶ ἐκείνης λέγω ἵνα ἐρωτήσῃ. (also in Exo 32:30)
Likewise it seems that "ἁμαρτῆσαι" only accepts "ἁμαρτίαι" as direct objects.
Also, if my hypothesis is right, I think this is largely a semantic phenomenon that is independent of language, which I would describe as the verb having specific semantic restriction of its direct objects, in these cases resulting in only references to the entire implicit object being allowed. So I don't know whether it would be better to classify them as (partially) transitive verbs. Similarly, I consider "the rain rains" to be an example of the verb's semantic restriction on its subject, but it is hard for me to describe clearly what I mean for this because the verb "rain" has two slightly different semantic domains each with different restrictions. Anyway I searched Google and found:
"the rain rains harder/everyday/(on the just and unjust)" / "the snow snows hard here"
which illustrates the possibility in general of the implicit subject being made explicit when the verb is used to describe not the situation but the subject. This of course is restricted to verbs that have an implicit subject that can actually be referenced. "it seems that ..." is one that does not, where "it" is the only way to refer to "it".
It doesn't if my hypothesis is incorrect. But I claimed that when the noun phrase denotes the entire implicit object of an intransitive verb, then it can actually become an explicit object. If this is true, then since "βιῶσαι" has the implicit object "physical subsistence", and "τὸν ἐπίλοιπον ἐν σαρκὶ χρόνον" does denote the entire "remaining lifetime", then I claim that it naturally becomes the object of "βιῶσαι". I don't know how to demonstrate my claims though.cwconrad wrote:(2) it doesn't have any bearing on the question of the function of τὸν ἐπίλοιπον χρόνον in conjunction with βιόω; that is unquestionably an accusative of temporal extension.
Although I don't disagree that it is grammatically possible for "τὸν ἐπίλοιπον χρόνον" and "ἐν σαρκὶ" to be both adverbial and modifying "βιῶσαι". It is precisely because those phrases are referring to "the rest of the physical life in the body", as you said, that "τὸν ἐπίλοιπον ἐν σαρκὶ χρόνον" seems a natural direct object of "βιῶσαι", which refers to essentially the same thing. Do you have any reason why it shouldn't or can't be so?Iver Larsen wrote:To go back to 1 Pet 4:2 I would agree that the verb βιῶσαι does not have an object. [...] This does not mean "in the flesh" as opposed to "in the spirit" but it refers to the present physical life in the body as opposed to future life after death. A third secondary role of manner is described as θελήματι θεοῦ which of course is in contrast to ἀνθρώπων ἐπιθυμίαις.