Re: Luke 1:51

From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Thu May 16 1996 - 07:31:02 EDT


At 9:40 PM -0500 5/15/96, Edgar M. Krentz wrote:
>Carl, you wrote:
>>
>>Edgar, this is an interesting idea, and it is certainly made grammatically
>>impossible by the failure of the LXX translators to use articles to
>>indicate properly how the different words should be construed. I can't
>>really conceive, however, how DIANOIAi KARDIAS AUTWN can be anything but
>>attributive to hUPERHFANOUS, and I suspect that the word-order of the
>>Hebrew text is being reproduced here. Certainly good Greek would have
>>expressed the idea you suggest rather something like: TOUS hUPERHFANOUS
>>DIESKORPISEN THi THS KARDIAS AUTWN DIANOIAi, and in less good Greek, that
>>sense might be expressed by the word-order: hUPERHFANOUS DIESKORPISEN
>>DIANOIAi KARDIAS AUTWN; but with DIESKORPISEN in initial position and
>>separated from DIANOIAi, that instrumental sense seems the more unlikely.
 . . . .
>If I thought that Luke wrote those words himself, I might be persuaded by
>your argument from good classical Greek stylistics. But I think that he is
>citing an earlier Jewish [possibly Maccabaean era] psalm or modelling the
>Magnificat on such a psalm. In that case the Greek might not make that
>elegant and more correct use of the definite article as you give it above.
>
>And I am fascinated by that idea of SKLHROKARDIA, something like the
>threeford PAREDWKEN in Romans 1.
>
>In short the syntactical argument in writing seeking to be alttestamentlich
>in der Sprachgefuehl might still allow what I suggest. I just might have to
>send a search command through the LXX to check out such instrumental
>datives without EN and the definite article. :-)

Edgar, you may be right here, although I still think probabilities are on my side. I do want to note,however, that I goofed in the first line of what you cite from me above:

>>Edgar, this is an interesting idea, and it is certainly made grammatically
>>impossible by the failure of the LXX translators to use articles to

It SHOULD read " ... it is certainly made grammatically POSSIBLE by ..."

I'm subject to SKLHROKARDIA as well AS SKLHEROEGKEFALIA myself. In in N.C. for a couple days trying to recover from these afflictions. Hope it works. ;-)

Cordially, c



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