Luke 24.37 clayton stirling bartholomew c.s.bartholomew at worldnet.att.net
Tue Apr 25 14:25:56 EDT 2000
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on 04/24/00 8:21 PM, Gordon Goltz wrote:>
Working on the Gospel Lesson for Easter 3, I am puzzled what to do with>
genomenoi in Luke 24.37.Gordon,These participles also have a discourse function above the level of theparagraph. This will not be reflected in your translation but is worth someattention none the less.Luke 24:36-37TAUTA DE AUTWN LALOUNTWNAUTOS ESTH EN MESWi AUTWNKAI LEGEI AUTOIS EIRHNH hUMINPTOHQENTES DE KAI EMFOBOI GENOMENOIEDOKOUN PNEUMA QEWREINAccording to Levinsohn* the pre-positive participle (before the main verb)serves one or two discourse functions. At the discourse level (above theparagraph) the pre-positive participle indicates continuity at some levelwith the preceding context. This continuity may include time, location,participants, or topic. In the case where the participle is a genitive as wesee in Luke 24:36 the subject of the participle will typically be differentthan the subject of the main verb. When the participle is nominative thenthe subject of the participle will typically be the same as that of the mainverb as we see in Luke 24:37.In this passage we see that our red GNT (UBS3 or 4) is divided betweenLk 24:35 and 24:36. If we take a close look at the previous context, thejourney to Emmaus, particularly the end of it verses 34-35 and then we lookat the participle and its arguments in verse 36 we will see that there is avery close connection that spans the break in our GNT. The genitiveparticiple in v. 36 is used to mark a change in participant. That is Jesusis re-introduced into the scene. Apart from this, the topic, location,participants and time are all continuous with the scene in verses 34-35.The nominative pre-positive participles in verse 37 also contribute to thecontinuity since the subject of these participles is anaphoric, looking backto the object of Jesus greeting in verse 36 and also back to the group ofparticipants in verse 34-35.So what is the point of all this? Don’t take the divisions in your GNT tooseriously. The reasons for breaking the text at certain places in the GNThave a lot to do with the history of synoptic research** in the last severalhundred years. Concluding remarks:While making note of the syntactical function(s) of the pre-positiveparticiple we need to also be aware that they have one or more discourselevel functions. Another pragmatic/semantic function of these participles Ididn’t mention above is to “background” the information in the participialconstituent relative to the information in the main verb and its arguments.Levinsohn* considers this as the main purpose of participles. You will needto read him to get the details on this.– Clayton Stirling BartholomewThree Tree PointP.O. Box 255 Seahurst WA 98062*Levinsohn, Stephen Discourse Features of New Testament Greek, SIL 1992 chapter 12, PPS. 177ff.** for more details on topic of divisions in the GNT see:Dungan, David L. A history of the synoptic problem: the canon, thetext, the composition and the interpretation of the Gospels. Doubleday,1999, Series: The Anchor Bible Reference Library.
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