[b-greek] Re: 2Tim 3:16

From: clayton stirling bartholomew (c.s.bartholomew@worldnet.att.net)
Date: Mon Nov 06 2000 - 15:46:00 EST


on 11/05/00 11:47 PM, clayton stirling bartholomew wrote:

> on 11/05/00 10:03 PM, CEP7@aol.com wrote:
>
>> What bears on the relation of adj. to noun most directly: In the NT, LXX, in
>> classical and Koine Greek, the overwhelming semantic force of an
>> adj.-noun-adj. construction in an equative clause is that the first adj. will
>> be attributive and the second will be predicate. There are almost 50
>> instances in the NT and LXX in which the second adj. in such a construction
>> is predicate and the first is attributive (39 of which involve PAS before the
>> noun; most in the LXX) and none on the other side. The evidence is so
>> overwhelming that we may suggest a ³rule²: In PAS + noun + adjective
>> constructions in equative clauses the PAS, being by nature as definite as the
>> article, implies the article, thus making the adjective(s) following the noun
>> outside the implied article-noun group and, therefore, predicate.
>
> Charles,
>
> Would it be too much to ask, if one wanted to see the list of references for
> these almost 50 examples. I spent an hour with Accordance playing around
> with different patterns and the numbers I was coming up with were
> substantially lower than that even before I manually sorted out all the
> patterns which were NOT equative. This makes me real inquisitive. If you
> could just provide us with the list then the b-greek folks could hammer on
> these examples a little and see how the hold up under stress.

Well, no one has taken me up on this. I did some more work in Accordance and
found what looks like a counter example:

James 1:17
PASA DOSIS AGAQH KAI
PAN DWRHMA TELEION ANWQEN ESTIN

In this case the pattern PAS + noun + adj is in an equative clause and both
PAS and the adj limit the noun, the predicate of ESTIN is the adverb ANWQEN.

In the LXX:

Lev 27:28

PAN ANAQEMA hAGION hAGIWN ESTAI TWi KURIWi

Here we have the pattern PAS + noun + adj + adj + ESTIN

The first adj after the noun limits the noun, the second adj is the
predicate of ESTAI.

I am not sure that these counter examples are really applicable. The
proposed rule is defined in such a manner that it may in fact rule out
counter examples in advance. If this is the case then it is just a
tautology, not a rule.

*********

My main beef with this argument is that I cannot find support for the
statement "The evidence is so overwhelming" . . . . The only other equative
clause I could find in the NT that fit the prescribed pattern was James 1:19
which seemed to work according to the so called "rule." I am not saying the
evidence does not exist, I am just waiting to see it.

You know I studied dogmatics extensively in graduate school. That was all I
studied in graduate school. This argument quote above from a reference
grammar seems to be a classic piece of "exegetical" dogmatics very thinly
disguised as NT Greek grammar. I know this has been said before so I will
not belabor it.

Clay

--
Clayton Stirling Bartholomew
Three Tree Point
P.O. Box 255 Seahurst WA 98062



---
B-Greek home page: http://metalab.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 - 15:36:40 EDT