Re: XARIN as preposition: Gal 3:19

From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Sat May 27 2000 - 06:25:19 EDT


At 1:50 AM -0400 5/27/00, Suedaleg@aol.com wrote:
>A week ago I was told that XARIN in this verse is used as a preposition. I
>have been thinking about this and trying to assimilate the concept.
>
>TWN PARABASEWN XARIN PROTETEQH . . .
>
>I looked XARIN up in my dictionary and it did define it as such; an
>accusative used as a preposition. meaning "as a favor to; because of ".
>
>If such is the use here, is PARABASEWN (gen plur ) the object of the
>proposition ("as a favor for, or because of transgressions") or should we
>seek an unspoken object (them? us? you?)? The tricky part of the
>construction is the apprent object (at least to the NKJV translators) is that
>the object precedes the preposition. (Does this make it a "suf-position"?
>Sorry, could not resist the temptation to pun.) In English we sometimes put
>the preposition at the end of the sentance (just to irk our grammar teachers)
>but it always has a clear object at the beginning of the sentance. After all
>we would not say "Up to what are you?" ( unless your name is Yoda). Is this
>construction similar? are there other examples? Unless I learn something
>solid I may continue to translate this as " It was added as a grace to {us}
>because of transgressions"
>
>Thanks for yuor help understanding this structure.
>
>PS: I will invest in a good lexicon as soon as I can afford it. Thanks.

To resond to the last part first, in the meantime you can surely consult
the Perseus LSJ.

CARIN is, of course, the acc. sg. of CARIS; Greek uses another acc. sg. of
a noun DIKHN from DIKH in the sense of "way," "manner" similarly as an
adverbial accusative; it's like our use of suffixes "-wise" or "-like" in
English to form adverbs in what a Hebrew grammarian might call a
"construct" form to make an adverb. Generally CARIN and DIKHN follow upon
the genitive dependent upon them. I suppose you could say that the genitive
is of the object of the preposition, but the real reason is simply that
structurally the case of a noun dependent upon another noun is normally the
genitive. And I'd say that the sense of CARIS here as a 'preposition' is
something like "in return for"--I argued the other day that the most
fundamental sense of CARIS is something like "expression of goodwill and
the responsive goodwill it elicits."
--

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

---
B-Greek home page: http://sunsite.unc.edu/bgreek
You are currently subscribed to b-greek as: [jwrobie@mindspring.com]
To unsubscribe, forward this message to leave-b-greek-327Q@franklin.oit.unc.edu
To subscribe, send a message to subscribe-b-greek@franklin.oit.unc.edu




This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Sat Apr 20 2002 - 15:36:27 EDT