From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Thu Jan 11 1996 - 17:29:24 EST
At 11:32 PM 1/10/96, Kenneth Litwak wrote:
>Carl,
>
> Okay, here's the whole sentence. See if this works better.
>OUAI TW LAMBONONTI. EI MEN GAR ChREIAN EChWN LAMBANEI TIS, AQWOS ESTAI.
>(O DE MH ChREIAN EChWN DWSEI DIKAN, (HINA TI' ELABE KAI ESI TI'.
There's still something missing. It reads: "Woe to him who takes. For if
(on the one hand) someone takes because he has need, he will be scot-free.
But the one who does not have need will be punished: why did he take it and
for what?" (assuming that after the comma the reading is hINA TI ELABE KAI
EIS TI--and I assume that you've deliberately emphasized the acute accents
indicating that we're dealing with the interrogative TI here)
Yes, I'd suppose that we have a solecism here in that hINA TI'--the hINA is
being used as a preposition with the TI' as if the hINA were an equivalent
of DIA. I think I've seen this in papyri; clearly the reason it comes about
is that the hINA regularly introduces purposes clauses (and in fact
originally is a relative pronoun in the acc. meaning the same thing as
French "a` fin que"). I think what we have here is an elliptical clause
that completes the original ending in AQWOS ESTAI. Freely, I make it, "But
the one who has no need will be punished, (for) why did he take it, and for
what?"
>Also, I'm puzzled because Lightfoot translated EKTEN IDIWN ChARISMATWN
>as "from His own bounties". I think it's pretty obvios this is a
>plural, which I wasn't quite sure how to handle because the antecedent
>is singular, but this translation can't be right. Thanks.
Are you sure that it wasn't EK TWN IDIWN CARISMATWN? If the text reads
EKTEN, it is meaningless (although in Homer it might mean something like,
"he killed"), in which case Lightfoot viewed the text as erroneous and
surmised that what was meant was EK TWN. With that alteration of the Greek,
"from his bounties" is perfectly reasonable.
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University
One Brookings Drive, St. Louis, MO, USA 63130
(314) 935-4018
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu OR cwc@oui.com
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Sat Apr 20 2002 - 15:37:35 EDT