Subjective/Objective Genitive in 2 Kingdoms 18:5

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MAubrey
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Subjective/Objective Genitive in 2 Kingdoms 18:5

Post by MAubrey »

I came across this example in 2 Kingdoms over the weekend. I kind of wonder if participles are more useful in Greek for such constructions:
1 Kingdoms 18:5 wrote:πᾶς ὁ λαὸς ἤκουσεν ἐντελλομένου τοῦ βασιλέως πᾶσιν τοῖς ἄρχουσιν ὑπὲρ Ἀβεσσαλώμ
All the people heard about the king's command to all his generals regarding Absalom
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Re: Subjective and objective genitive

Post by Ken M. Penner »

MAubrey wrote:I came across this example in 2 Kingdoms over the weekend. I kind of wonder if participles are more useful in Greek for such constructions:
2 Kingdoms 18:5 wrote:πᾶς ὁ λαὸς ἤκουσεν ἐντελλομένου τοῦ βασιλέως πᾶσιν τοῖς ἄρχουσιν ὑπὲρ Ἀβεσσαλώμ
All the people heard about the king's command to all his generals regarding Absalom
That's a genitive absolute: When the king was commanding all his leaders about Absalom, all the people heard it.
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Re: Subjective and objective genitive

Post by MAubrey »

Ken M. Penner wrote:That's a genitive absolute: When the king was commanding all his leaders about Absalom, all the people heard it.
That's debatable, since ἀκουω can take genitive objects. Personally, I find it difficult to read the participle clause as an absolute when it is follow directly after a verb that has no other explicit object.

Whether it is or it isn't has no bearing on my point.
The translator wrote:καὶ πᾶς ὁ λαὸς ἤκουσεν ἐντελλομένου τοῦ βασιλέως πᾶσιν τοῖς ἄρχουσιν ὑπὲρ Ἀβεσσαλώμ.
But depending on which interpretation you choose, he could have written either of these:
Genitive object wrote:καὶ πᾶς ὁ λαὸς ἤκουσεν ἐντἀλματος τοῦ βασιλέως πᾶσιν τοῖς ἄρχουσιν ὑπὲρ Ἀβεσσαλώμ
Nominal equivalent to a genitive absolute wrote:καὶ πᾶς ὁ λαὸς ἤκουσεν ἐν ἐντἀλματι τοῦ βασιλέως πᾶσιν τοῖς ἄρχουσιν ὑπὲρ Ἀβεσσαλώμ
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Re: Subjective and objective genitive

Post by Ken M. Penner »

MAubrey wrote:
Ken M. Penner wrote:That's a genitive absolute: When the king was commanding all his leaders about Absalom, all the people heard it.
That's debatable, since ἀκουω can take genitive objects.

Whether it is or it isn't has no bearing on my point.
You recognize that it's not a noun but a participle, right? I think that puts it in a different category; after all, none of the examples of genitives in this thread have been participles. It seems to me that this is not a substantive passive participle "what was being commanded" but a middle participle. When the passive participle of ἐντέλλω is intended substantivally "commandment", not the present but the perfect is normally used.
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Re: Subjective and objective genitive

Post by MAubrey »

Ken M. Penner wrote:You recognize that it's not a noun but a participle, right? I think that puts it in a different category; after all, none of the examples of genitives in this thread have been participles.
Yes. That's exactly my point. I'm suggesting that participles are more useful for in Greek conveying subjective-objective relationships than nouns with a genitive modifier. My post was flowing directly from my musing on Saturday:
MAubrey wrote:Part of me wonders whether such usage could be preferably done with participles instead...
Ken M. Penner wrote:It seems to me that this is not a substantive passive participle "what was being commanded" but a middle participle.
.
I don't recognize any difference between middle and passive. The English syntactic passive may be a function of the middle, but there is only middle voice.
Ken M. Penner wrote:When the passive participle of ἐντέλλω is intended substantivally "commandment", not the present but the perfect is normally used.
If you've got data for that, I'd say that would be worth a thread of its own. I'd be interested.
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Re: Subjective and objective genitive

Post by cwconrad »

Text: πᾶς ὁ λαὸς ἤκουσεν ἐντελλομένου τοῦ βασιλέως πᾶσιν τοῖς ἄρχουσιν ὑπὲρ Ἀβεσσαλώμ

For my money, this is pretty clearly an instance of noun + ptc. in genitive functioning as complement of ἤκουσεν. Genitive absolutes ordinarily appear in advance of the main clause of a sentence and set forth the circumstances of the event narrated. That is to say, IF this were intended as a genitive absolute, I would expect the word order:

ἐντελλομένου τοῦ βασιλέως πᾶσιν τοῖς ἄρχουσιν ὑπὲρ Ἀβεσσαλώμ, πᾶς ὁ λαὸς ἤκουσεν.

But, to be perfectly honest, I find it difficult to conceive of a verb like ἤκουσεν being used like this without an explicit complement.
οὔτοι ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς πάντα θεοὶ θνητοῖς ὑπέδειξαν,
ἀλλὰ χρόνῳ ζητέοντες ἐφευρίσκουσιν ἄμεινον. (Xenophanes, Fragment 16)

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Re: Subjective and objective genitive

Post by Ken M. Penner »

cwconrad wrote:Text: πᾶς ὁ λαὸς ἤκουσεν ἐντελλομένου τοῦ βασιλέως πᾶσιν τοῖς ἄρχουσιν ὑπὲρ Ἀβεσσαλώμ

For my money, this is pretty clearly an instance of noun + ptc. in genitive functioning as complement of ἤκουσεν. Genitive absolutes ordinarily appear in advance of the main clause of a sentence and set forth the circumstances of the event narrated. That is to say, IF this were intended as a genitive absolute, I would expect the word order:

ἐντελλομένου τοῦ βασιλέως πᾶσιν τοῖς ἄρχουσιν ὑπὲρ Ἀβεσσαλώμ, πᾶς ὁ λαὸς ἤκουσεν.
Maybe I've been too immersed in LXX lately. The temporal expression is the one that seemed natural to me. The Greek translators were rendering the Hebrew phrase that the MT points as שָׁמְעוּ בְּצַוֹּת הַמֶּלֶךְ, which is a temporal expression (see the NRSV "And all the people heard when the king gave orders"). So I'd say they were intending it as a genitive absolute, not as the complement of ἤκουσεν. Whether it was read like that is a different question.
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Re: Subjective and objective genitive

Post by Stephen Carlson »

Ken M. Penner wrote:
cwconrad wrote:Text: πᾶς ὁ λαὸς ἤκουσεν ἐντελλομένου τοῦ βασιλέως πᾶσιν τοῖς ἄρχουσιν ὑπὲρ Ἀβεσσαλώμ
Maybe I've been too immersed in LXX lately. The temporal expression is the one that seemed natural to me. The Greek translators were rendering the Hebrew phrase that the MT points as שָׁמְעוּ בְּצַוֹּת הַמֶּלֶךְ, which is a temporal expression (see the NRSV "And all the people heard when the king gave orders"). So I'd say they were intending it as a genitive absolute, not as the complement of ἤκουσεν. Whether it was read like that is a different question.
Ken, do you have a sense for how often the LXX translators use an articulated infinitive to render such temporal expressions, as if: ἤκουσαν ἐν τῷ ἐντέλλεσθαι τὸν βασιλέα πᾶσιν τοῖς ἄρχουσιν ὑπὲρ Ἀβεσσαλώμ? Or do they generally prefer genitive absolutes for this?
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Re: Subjective and objective genitive

Post by Ken M. Penner »

My impression is that εν τω with the infinitive is the more common way to render ב with the infinitive construct.
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Re: Subjective and objective genitive

Post by David Lim »

Ken M. Penner wrote:
MAubrey wrote:
Ken M. Penner wrote:That's a genitive absolute: When the king was commanding all his leaders about Absalom, all the people heard it.
That's debatable, since ἀκουω can take genitive objects.

Whether it is or it isn't has no bearing on my point.
You recognize that it's not a noun but a participle, right? [...]
I think that "εντελλομενου του βασιλεως ..." cannot be the object of "ηκουσεν", because it is not a noun phrase, which would have been "του βασιλεως του εντελλομενου ...".
δαυιδ λιμ
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