[B-Greek] Two Greek expressions in Luke 2

Jonathan Robie jwrobie at mindspring.com
Wed Jun 6 09:36:54 EDT 2007


Carl W. Conrad wrote:
> They are both nouns and rightly tagged. One of the tricks I long ago 
> found useful with adnominal (adjectival) genitives -- although it 
> won't work in every instance -- is to create an English expression 
> with the genitive word followed by a hyphen and then the noun upon 
> which the genitive is dependent. In this instance it's "a day-journey." 

Ah, just knowing the name of the construct is helpful - I just read the 
section in Smyth:

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.04.0007%3Ahead%3D%23362

> But often just using an equivalent "possessive" English expression 
> works too, as "a day's journey" or "journey of a day." What is perhaps 
> more useful is using this methodology (when you don't understand an 
> adnominal genitive expresion intuitively and so must analyze it) is 
> that it let's you become aware of how the Greek phrase actually works, 
> so that you don't need to think through Wallace's 'leventy-leven' 
> categories of adnominal genitive (subjective, objective, plenary, 
> descriptive, etc., etc.). The adnominal genitive is not a semantic 
> structure but an indicator of relationship between the two nouns 
> wherein the genitive noun is functioning adjectivally to qualify the 
> other noun. Think of expressions like "love's labor," "fool's gold," 
> "cat's paw," "love of life" (a life-long love? or a passion to live?); 
> you have to think through these things as you meet them if you don't 
> discern them immediately, but it's usually no great chore. What 
> Wallace in GGBB attempts to do is to turn all that guesswork into some 
> sort of algorithm -- and I really think that's superfluous.

Got it, this is extremely helpful!

Jonathan


More information about the B-Greek mailing list