RandallButh wrote:I think that that idea of 'implied verb' is unnecessary and distracting.
That depends on what language you (as a reader) are used to dealing with and on the syntax of a given passage.
Of course the cases inherently express
relationship not
meaning, but even when the grammatical relationship is understood at a conceptual level, it is not easy to understand how it should be taken in a real sense. Working out the implied verbs allows one to define more clearly what the relationship between two nouns might be. In fact, taking the genitive to mean “of” is understanding an implied verb to “have” (it doesn’t have to be added). As for the genitive not being understood as an implied verbal (or other relationship) suffice it to say that some of my colleagues like to use the Bible to teach English. As much as I love the Book, I don't follow suite because Biblical English has an over-use of the word "of", where it has been translated from the Greek genitive (and a stilted verbal system). It is often very apparent that students have been learning English from the Bible.
So if the genitive doesn't
mean "of" (or "my", "your"), (even though that is used as a
fall-back translation), what does it mean? The genitive case shows us that the noun (or nominal phrase) in the genitive is not involved (or affected) by the action of the verb. The genitive absolute is a clear example of that. It doesn't
mean "while" or "as" (as it is possible to translate it), but it indicates that there is an action going on which is not affected by the verb of the paragraph, but it has some bearing on the action. The same (dissociated from + unaffected by) is true of all genitives (more or less) even when they are associated with other units in the sentence.
Two examples random examples showing the dissociated referentiality of the genitive where it is not useful to supply (deduce) an implied verb are;
First, in Acts 21:26 διαγγέλλων τὴν ἐκπλήρωσιν τῶν ἡμερῶν τοῦ ἁγνισμοῦ , ἕως οὗ προσηνέχθη ὑπὲρ ἑνὸς ἑκάστου αὐτῶν ἡ προσφορά we find that the apostle is “declaring the fulfillment of the days of the sanctification, until when the offering will be offered for each and every one of them”. Here, the genitival relationship between τὴν ἐκπλήρωσιν and τῶν ἡμερῶν is not helped by finding an implied verb – the noun is derived from the verb. Having a genitive prompts us to ask a silent question, “How (in relation to what?) are we to understand the ἐκπλήρωσις (end of a specified time)”? We understand it in relation to the days, but the days themselves are not affected by this ἐκπλήρωσις (the sun still rises and sets etc.), but in this context, we consider them special days that get extra meaning from being contextualised by the ἁγνισμός but the “purification”
per se is independent of any day. οὗ “when” is the point of finishing the time, i.e. the ἐκπλήρωσις τῶν ἡμερῶν “the completion of the [length of time measured by] days”. The ἕως explicates (or matches) added sense (of finishing) that the ἐκπλήρωσις gives to αἱ ἡμέραι. To look at the ὑπὲρ ἑνὸς ἑκάστου αὐτῶν first as a genitival phrase, we would say that the action of the passive verb προσηνέχθη ἡ προσφορά is taken in relation to the “every one of them”, but they can either be unaffected (grammatically) by doing it “the offering was offered by every one of them”, or unaffected by the action as that the offering was done for them and they were not part of the process of the actual offering (which was carried vicarously out by a priest), or it could be that I am looking too deeply to distinguish the two senses of ὑπέρ.
For a second example, and another way in which the genitive as an external point of reference (unaffected by the verb), being one of the contexts within which the verb should be understood the case of the middle ἐπιλαμβάνομαι (usually plus genitive) such as in Mk.8:23 ἐπιλαβόμενος τῆς χειρὸς τοῦ τυφλοῦ is conveniently translated by "taking the blind man by the hand", but in the sense of a relationship to the middle verb expressed by the genitive cases, is something like; the verb the first one τῆς χειρὸς relates to the verb as the a (linguistically) unaffected reference point for the action of ἐπιλαβόμενος and the second τοῦ τυφλοῦ relates to the verb as the referential context of the person who is, of course, not affected by the middle verb, I think it is clearly "take the hand of the vision impaired person" as that would be the a contexualised (or referred) referentiality (which in my experience / understanding doesn’t
naturally occur).