[b-greek] Re: MIA instead of PRWTH?

From: Jim West (jwest@highland.net)
Date: Sat Sep 02 2000 - 21:57:05 EDT


At 09:30 PM 9/2/00 -0400, you wrote:
>Dear friends:
>
>I am confused with using MIA instead of PRWTH in Acts 20:7:
>EN DE TH MIA TWN SABBATWN SUNHGMENWN TWN MAQHTWN TOU KLASAI ARTON ...
>All translations give "On the first day of the week...". My question is:
>why is the ordinal PRWTH substituted with cardinal MIA. I know some other
>examples of it. Another question is this: cannot it be translated as "on
>one of the sabbaths..."?

there is an excellent discussion of this in the commentary by Strack and
Billerbeck ad loc. It apparently stems from a very ancient rabbinic
practice regarding descriptions of sabbaths when two fall on one week. For
instance, during the week of passover there is the regular sabbath- the 7th
day, and there is also the "day of rest" (sabbath) for the passover day as
well. Thus, in such weeks when the week contains two sabbaths the phrase
above is utilized to denote the normal sabbath rather than the extraordinary
one.

notice the syntax- where you have literally- the "first of the sabbaths"
sabbath in aramaic is feminine, thus the feminine gender is used for the
numeral....

hope this helps some.

Jim

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

"Do not ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by
incompetence" -Napoleon

Jim West, ThD
http://web.infoave.net/~jwest


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