Re: Definite noun with anarthous attribute

From: dixonps@juno.com
Date: Mon Mar 06 2000 - 14:00:52 EST


From: "Carl W. Conrad" <cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu>

Carl says:

> I'm not sure that I understood Kimmo's original question correctly
either--and that's why I asked my question. Without having done
comparable
research to what Dan Christiansen has done for Matthew in the rest of the
GNT, my inclination is to say that the burden of proof is on the one who
wants to claim any particular instance of such an adjective in the
pattern
hO ANHR AGAQOS is attributive.

> On the other hand, it seems to me that the prepositional phrase is a
different matter altogether. That is, as Dan notes, the real subject of
that section in Robertson's grammar. Here, it seems to me, is an area
where
Hellenistic practice seems more flexible than classical Attic, although
I'm
not so sure that classical Attic is altogether rigorous regarding such a
pattern as hOI EN THi POLEI NAUTAI although I think that (or hOI NAUTAI
hOI
EN THi POLEI) is surely more likely to be seen in Attic than hOI NAUTAI
EN
THi POLEI. Just over the weekend we had the question raised by Brian
Swedburg and answered by Clay Bartholomew about John 15:2 PAN KLHMA EN
EMOI
MH FERON KARPON AIREI AUTO, where EN EMOI must be attributive to PAN
KLHMA;
to be sure there's no article with KLHMA but I hardly think there's
reason
to argue seriously that EN EMOI is not attributive to KLHMA.

> I still remember my shock when I first took a close look at the Greek
text
of the celebrated Pauline proof-text for faith-righteousness (Rom 1:17,
Gal
3:11, also cited in Heb 10:38): hO DE DIKAIOS EK PISTEWS ZHSETAI. What
shocked me was that Paul surely does seem to understand EK PISTEWS as
attributive to hO DIKAIOS although it seemed to me that in classical
Attic
the prepositional phrase EK PISTEWS would ordinarily be understood as
adverbially associated with the verb ZHSETAI--as it does in fact appear
to
be meant in Hab 2:4 (LXX). In older Greek I would have expected Paul's
conception to be written hO EK PISTEWS DIKAIOS or hO DIKAIOS hO EK
PISTEWS--yet it is pretty clear (and Robertson loc.cit. explains well
enough) that the Pauline collocation is common enough in Hellenistic or
NT
Greek.

----------------

I'm trying a different way of responding, being tired of getting chopped
up
replies, unless I take the time to doctor up the previous messages. If
this
doesn't work, or is too much of a problem for others, or if you have
ideas
for expediencey, please let me know. So, am forwarding with far less
work.

Anyhow, are there any examples of articular nouns with anarthrous
attributes, or is it just the case that definite anarthrous nouns can
have anarthous attributes? I can certainly see the rationale for the
latter, since an anarthrous definite noun with an articular attribute
would confuse the matter, suggesting the articular attribute should
be the subject and the anarthrous construction the predicate.

If there are no examples of articular nouns with anarthrous attributes,
then taking EK PISTEWS attributively with hO DE DIKAIOS in Rom 1:17
becomes even more troublesome.

Paul Dixon

-- 

Carl W. Conrad Department of Classics/Washington University One Brookings Drive/St. Louis, MO, USA 63130/(314) 935-4018 Home: 7222 Colgate Ave./St. Louis, MO 63130/(314) 726-5649 cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/

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