Re: hH OUSA hAIRESIS in Acts 5:17

From: Carl William Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Fri Jan 09 1998 - 11:33:40 EST


On Fri, 9 Jan 1998, DMills0418 wrote:

> I am a little puzzled by the phrase in Acts 5:17 that includes the participle
> of EIMI: ANASTAS DE hO ARCIEREUS KAI PANTES hOI SUN AUTWi, hH OUSA hAIRESIS
> TWN SADDOUKAIWN, EPLHSQHSAN ZHLOU. At first, I thought hH ought to be a
> relative pronoun, but it has no accent and it is not plural. So my question
> is, how is this phrase connected to the main clause? If the phrase is like a
> parenthetical statement, why isn't there a finite verb instead of a
> participle?

This does seem rather odd phrasing; my immediate reaction was to take hH
OUSA hAIRESIS TWN SADDOUKAIWN as an appositive to hOI SUN AUTWi and
understand it as the equivalent of a relative pronoun with a finite verb
(= hOI\ HSAN THS TWN SADDOUKAIWN hAIRESEWS, or the like). I have F.F.
Bruce's commentary ready to hand; he cites the NEB version, "the Sadducean
party as it then was," evidently with approval, but then goes on to say
that Pharisees must also have been present (as seems evident from the
larger context). This seems also to take the participial phrase as an
appositive to hOI SUN AUTWi, which makes sense, since the Sadducees were
fundamentally the priestly sectarians. So it's "the (at that time, still)
existing party of the Sadducees." Curious! Does this have a bearing on the
dating of the composition of Acts? The fate/doom of the Sadducean party
was pretty much sealed with the destruction of the Temple (and Jerusalem)
in 70. I don't really want to get into the "dating game" here, but it's
hard to imagine a different way to take OUSA than as existential.

What strikes me as relatively rare here is the use of the participle of
EIMI in an existential rather than copulative sense; one might have
expected for the sense supported in the NEB version an adverb such as
TOTE: hH TOTE OUSA hAIRESIS TWN SADDOUKAIWN.

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University
One Brookings Drive, St. Louis, MO, USA 63130
(314) 935-4018
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu OR cwc@oui.com
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/



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