Re: Luke 24.37

From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Tue Apr 25 2000 - 06:30:38 EDT


At 11:21 PM -0400 4/24/00, Gordon Goltz wrote:
> Working on the Gospel Lesson for Easter 3, I am puzzled what to do with
>genomenoi in Luke 24.37. The RSV translates: "they were startled and
>frightened"--does the translation go: "being startled, they became
>frightened"?

Text: PTOHQENTES DE KAI EMFOBOI GENOMENOI EDOKOUN PNEUMA QEWREIN.

No, more simply: if one translates the participle PTOHQENTES and the
participial phrase EMFOBOI GENOMENOI both as indicating factors explanatory
of why they thought they were looking at a ghost, then it's literally,
"Having been startled, and having become fearful, they thought they were
looking at a ghost."

But there's something about this construction that is standard in all
ancient Greek of whatever period: one or more aorist participles in
agreement with the subject and preceding a main verb is a standard Greek
way of stating sequential actions and or states, the aorist participles
normally indicating what preceded in time the action or state indicated in
the main verb. The more normal structure for the same sequence in English
is to coordinate these verbs but put first the ones indicating what are
necessarily prior actions or states. Therefore the more common English way
of stating the Greek sentence above is: "They were startled and became
fearful and imagined that they were looking at a ghost."

-- 

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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