Re: hINA + infinitive

From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Thu May 20 1999 - 11:12:07 EDT


At 1:51 PM -0700 5/19/99, clayton stirling bartholomew wrote:
>In Acts 17:30 Codex Bezae *reads:
>
>hINA PANTES PANTACOU METANOEIN
>
>where NA27 reads
>
>PANTAS PANTACOU METANOEIN
>
>In Ropes' edition of Bezae he puts daggers around METANOEIN to indicate
>an obvious error.
>
>My question is, what error?
>
>After looking into this a little I am guessing that METANOEIN should
>have been changed to a subjunctive when hINA was inserted.
>
>*This reading is NOT included in the NA27 apparatus.

This is interesting, if primarily linguistically. Since hINA really means
something like French 'afin que' (used with subjunctive) or 'afin de' (used
with infinitive), it appears to me to be another fascinating little hint
concerning Koine Greek as a language in transition. I have long suspected
(although I haven't seen a discussion of this in any formal treatise) that
hINA + subjunctive was already functioning in many NT passages precisely as
it does in Modern Greek, i.e. AS AN INFINITIVE sometimes expressing
purpose, sometimes expressing result. So here, it looks like METANOEIN as
an infinitive is used with hINA owing to a sense on the part of the writer
(or scribe) that hINA + subjunctive does have the same idiomatic function
as an infinitive or purpose.

I think most are probably aware that hINA originates as an accusative
relatiave pronoun that has become a relative adverb correlative with TINA
and meaning the same thing as classical Attic hOPOI. I think there are GNT
instances of this relative adverb hINA but I can't call to mind immediately
where it/they may be.

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University
Summer: 1647 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/

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