[B-Greek] Luke 1:8-9 What do these two clauses modify?

Jonathan Robie jwrobie at mindspring.com
Mon Mar 12 14:14:43 EST 2007


Hi John,

Thanks for this. For what it's worth, I'm pretty aware that English is 
not Greek and vice versa, and I'm not trying to translate into English. 
The approach I'm taking, at Carl's suggestion, is to line out the text 
in phrases, work through any unfamiliar words or grammar, and read these 
phrases out loud repeatedly. My Greek is good enough to generally be 
able to read the individual clauses, but I do sometimes have difficulty 
relating the clauses to each other, and still make mistakes that may be 
obvious to some on the list - which is precisely why I benefit by asking 
these questions here!

In case anybody is interested, here's the outline I had made for this 
passage. I'm not trying to diagram the sentences, and the whitespace 
does not always reflect grammatical constructs consistently, I'm trying 
to make each line reflect a unit of thought that can be grasped before 
moving on to the next line; if I were reading the text out loud, I would 
pause at the end of each line. I notice, however, that the process of 
outlining the text raises questions about the relationships among 
clauses, and I change my outline based on the conclusions I come to.

(in B-Greek transliteration)

EGENETO DE EN TWi hIERATEUEIN AUTON
EN THi TAXEI THS EFHMERIAS AUTOU
ENANTI TOU QEOU
KATA TO EQOS THS hIERATEIAS
ELACE TOU QUMIASAI
EISELQWN EIS TON NAON TOU KURIOU,
KAI PAN TO PLHQOS HN TOU LAOU
PROSEUCOMENON
EXW THi hWRAi TOU QUMIAMATOS
WFQH DE AUTWi AGGELOS KURIOU
hESTWS EK DEXIWN TOU QUSIASTHRIOU TOU QUMIAMATOS.

(in Unicode, not sure how this will look)

Ἐγένετο δὲ ἐν τῷ ἱερατεύειν αὐτὸν
ἐν τῇ τάξει τῆς ἐφημερίας αὐτοῦ
ἔναντι τοῦ θεοῦ,
κατὰ τὸ ἔθος τῆς ἱερατείας
ἔλαχε τοῦ θυμιᾶσαι
εἰσελθὼν εἰς τὸν ναὸν τοῦ κυρίου,
καὶ πᾶν τὸ πλῆθος ἦν τοῦ λαοῦ
προσευχόμενον
ἔξω τῇ ὥρᾳ τοῦ θυμιάματος.
ὤφθη δὲ αὐτῷ ἄγγελος κυρίου
ἑστὼς ἐκ δεξιῶν τοῦ θυσιαστηρίου τοῦ θυμιάματος.


While I'm outlining, I can mostly think in Greek, but I go back and 
forth. I don't have problems, for instance, with knowing what EGENETO 
means in Greek, and since Greek is not my only language, I know 
something of how different languages are. As I work, I'll find I don't 
know several words in a passage this length, so I go look them up 
(taking me out of thinking in Greek while I process the English 
definitions in the lexicon, then going back to the text). I may also be 
unsure of the form of a verb, for instance, and go check that based on 
morphological tags (leaving Greek thinking mode again).

So it really was mostly the relationships among the clauses that I was 
asking about - I think we're largely on the same page about how to 
attack a text in general, thinking within a language, not expecting 
other languages to be English, and basic Greek vocabulary and 
constructs. I appreciated what you had to say about the relationships 
among these clauses!

Thanks!

Jonathan


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