[B-Greek] Martyrdom of Polycarp 9:1
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad2 at mac.com
Tue Dec 30 08:07:23 EST 2008
On Monday, December 29, 2008, at 07:36PM, "Bert de Haan" <dehaanaf at gmail.com> wrote:
> I have received some very helpful replies. I do have a few follow-up
>questions. (I considered changing the subject but there is enough of a
>connection so I left it.)
>1. Mark Lightman wrote "A genitive absolute is itself a type of
>genitive of time (within the time x was happening, y happened)
>but maybe the dative of time tries to pin point the time to a more
>definite point." My question: A genitive absolute doesn't have to a
>genitive of time does it? Two examples from "Martyrdom":
>8.1: ....THS hWRAS ELQOUSHS TOU ECIENAI, ONWi KAQISANTES AUTON HGAGON
>EIS THN POLIN. ....because the time had come to leave, they seated him
>on a donkey and brought him into the city. (It is possible to read;
>after the time had come... but in the context it doesn't make as much
>sense. I think it was AFTER he has finished praying and BECAUSE it was
>time.)
>17.2: KAI TAUTA EIPON hUPOBALLONTWN KAI ENISXUONTWN TWN
>IOUDAIWN,...And these things they said because the instigation and
>inciting of the Jews...
Certainly a genitive absolute does not have to be temporal; it may function in
the same manner as any subordinate adverbial (circumstantial) clause,
whether temporal (hOTE, hOTAN, EPEI), causal (DIOTI, EPEIDH),
concessive (KAI, KAIPER), etc.
>2. George Somsel wrote: "Note that the dative is used for a POINT of time."
>For Martyrdom 9:1 one of my proposed translation was "And when/while
>Polycarp entered the stadium there..." If we consider this a dative
>of time, -when- would then be possible but not -while-, correct?
In my opinion, the items that George cited really have no bearing on
the dative participial usage; they all concerned dative phrases, some with EN,
others aggregates of noun and adjective or simple dative (TWi QEREI).
>3. I tried looking at quite a number of posts from the archives but
>several only showed the subject but no message,
> (like this one.
>http://www.ibiblio.org/bgreek/test-archives/html4/2001-05/5404.html)
>I did gatherhowever that most of the constructions that sometimes are
>called "dative absolute" are not really absolute because there is a
>grammatical relationship with the main sentence.
> Matthew 8:1 reads: Καταβάντος δὲ αὐτοῦ ἀπὸ τοῦ ὄρους ἠκολούθησαν αὐτῷ
>ὄχλοι πολλοί. KATABANTOS DE AUTOU APO TOU OROUS HKOLOUQHSAN AUTWi
>OXLOI POLLOI. The fist part is considered a genitive absolute (by
>some/all?) but AUTOU has the same antecedent as AUTWi. Would that make
>it not an absolute?
No, because the AUTWi obviously is the complement to HKOLOUQHSAN;
the author clearly thinks of KATABANTOS ... APO TOU OROUS as equivalent to
EPEI APO TOU OROUS KATEBH.
>I am comparing this what Carl Conrad wrote about - X.A.6.3.10.
>XENOFWNTI POREUOMENWi hOI hIPPEIS ENTUGCANOUSI
>>PRESBUTAIS :
>He wrote: "This example is certainly more like the passage cited from
>Polycarp. But
>there is something of the dative of interest here: "As Xenophon traveled,
>his horsemen encounter elderly men." In my version here "his" conveys
>what I think is the sense of the dative: Xenophon is the person to whom
>this event if of concern/interest. For my part, I really don't think this is the
>same as an absolute construction su;ch as we have with a genitive
>participle-substantive phrase that has no direct syntactic linkage to the
>main clause."
>I understand the point that there is interest or concern, so the
>dative makes sense. I also see how this can apply to Martyrdom 9:1. I
>can't see the difference between the syntactic linkage here that makes
>it not a absolute construction and the lack of syntactic linkage in
>Matthew 8:1 to make it an absolute construction.
The difference as I see it is that Xenophon A.6.3.10 has a dative
participial phrase that is syntactically linked to the main clause in that
XENOFWNTI indicates the person to who the encounter of HIS
horsemen with the elderly mean is of interest, while Mt 8:1 there is
no such indication of interest, as is shown by the separate dative
pronoun AUTWi which completes HKOLOUQHSAN. It certainly
would have been possible for the author to use a dative participial
phrase and omit the AUTWi complement to HKOLOUQHSAN thus:
KATABANTI DE AUTWi APO TOU OROUS HKOLOUQHSAN OXLOI POLLOI,
"sizable crowds followed him when/after he descended from
the mountain."
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (ret)
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