Thanks for this interesting thought. I'll have to peruse some more examples that are "adjectival" as per this scholar and see if he is simply using the term in an anomalous way. Given that "adjectival" in reference to participles generally means "a participle in the attributive adjectival position", it would be odd to casually call a participle "adjectival" when the intended meaning is that it is simply adding non-required information about a noun/verb in the sentence. I appreciate the possibility of giving this a charitable interpretation, though.Could he simply have meant that it provides further description of the women, that is, it is just generally adjectival ?
I like this way of graphically breaking the text out within the constraints of the forum. To adopt a similar layout with a bit less detail, I would say:vc Ἦσαν δὲ
p ἐκεῖ
s γυναῖκες πολλαὶ
adv ἀπὸ μακρόθεν
v.part θεωροῦσαι
Thetic Ἦσαν δὲ ἐκεῖ γυναῖκες πολλαὶ
> > > > adv ἀπὸ μακρόθεν
> > > > v.part θεωροῦσαι
Thetic simply meaning this whole clause is introducing some new participants into the story at this point: "Now there were many women there." I appreciate that "thetic" is odd metalanguage, but I don't know what else to call such a construction. (One German scholar calls it the use of εἶναι ~ es gibt, which is nice if you are German or know German). To avoid further introducing meta-language, I'll just call the participle predicate. It is fulfilling the very common function of providing information about the people just introduced into a discourse. This is often done with a participle in Greek, though other means can be used as well. It is not equivalent to an English relative clause identifying the women in more detail; rather, it is predicating what the women are doing.