Ben C Smith

It is clearer in the Greek that the antecedent to these [men] is Sergius and Cornelius.

Ben.

spamandham

I guess I was hoping for a more in depth explanation. You certainly don't owe it to me, but I know you're a nice guy.

mountainman

Dear spamandham,

Please permit me to clarify the sitatuation in which we find ourselves ....

According to the mainstream authorities on this specific reference here we are dealing with one -- the closest (Sergius and Cornelius) - of the two antecedents in this phrase, as Ben and Jeffrey will ad nauseum over. Leaving this aside for the moment, as to the relative merits of the closer or the more distant (Jesus and Paul) antecedent, there is a far more profound issue that these mainstream pundits continue to walk away from with closed eyes and hands over their ears.

Namely that the text in our possession is not the writing of emperor Julian. It is a political and highly polemical refutation of Julian by the tax-exempt Bishop Cyrilus of Alexandria, who in ten or more books told us all about the lies of the emperor Julian. The mainstream are thus totally one-step removed from the action, and any quibbling over the nuances of floating antecendents, such as we see here constantly paraded by charcters on classicial hobby horses are to be regarded as side-show amusement value only --- for the reason stated above.

In a nutshell these guys have no comment to make on the external history of the text by Cyril, These guys, in the words of Arnaldo Momigliano, think of themselves as "insiders" of the text. This sort of stuf is handed down from authority, and involves the interprtation of nuances and the internal meaning, textual criticism and grokking the text from within. Dig man?

End of translations service.
Over.


Best wishes,


Pete

Ben C Smith

One more try.

The English translation separates these men from whatever its antecedent happens to be:

The reason for this is that they [Jesus and Paul] never even hoped that you would one day attain to such power as you have; for they were content if they could delude maidservants and slaves, and through them the women, and men like Cornelius and Sergius. But if you can show me that one of these men....

Now, an English teacher would tell his or her students to make the antecedent clear, and to avoid skipping the nearest antecedent to refer back to a more distant one. By this strict rule, the antecedent should be Cornelius and Sergius. However, authors do not always follow what their English teachers taught them, so it is possible that the antecedent is really the slaves, or really Jesus and Paul.

In the Greek, however, a relative pronoun is used, and it happens to come immediately after Sergius and Cornelius:

...οιους Κορνηλιος και Σργιος, ων εις....

...such as Cornelius and Sergius, of whom one....

There is no separation at all. When this happens, it is almost always the case that the noun (or nouns in this case) immediately preceding the relative pronoun (ων) is (or are) the antecedent. The author would basically have to be practically incompetent to make the reader mentally skip over the adjacent noun(s) back to a previous (set of) noun(s).

Furthermore, in the Greek the reader is actually skipping more antecedents than in English, since the English has these men, whereas the Greek simply has whose or of whom, in the genitive case (and there is no distinction in form between masculine, neuter, and feminine in the genitive case of these pronouns). So the women could be the antecedent as easily as Jesus and Paul.

But the point is that syntactically a noun (set) followed immediately by a relative pronoun, in Greek, is just virtually a lock as being related as antecedent and pronoun.

The reason the English translation is rendered differently than the actual Greek syntax is that the Greek is very hard to translate literally in some of these convoluted genitive constructions (of whom if you can show me one... not the best conversational English). Had the relative pronoun been in, say, the nominative case, the translation would have been much easier to give literally:

The reason for this is that they never even hoped that you would one day attain to such power as you have; for they were content if they could delude maidservants and slaves, and through them the women, and men like Cornelius and Sergius, who go unmentioned in the histories of the time....

Obviously that boldfaced portion is my own hypothetical rewriting, using a nominative relative pronoun (who). In this reworking it is clear, I think, that the antecedents are Cornelius and Sergius. The Greek, using a genitive relative pronoun, is just as clear as this.

Ben.

spamandham

I know you think this is a nit, but I still think it prudent for someone who has expertise in Greek (Ben, Jeffrey, or anyone else who fits the bill here) to contact tertullian.org and suggest a footnote on this point so that other lost souls will not make the same mistake I've apparently made.

What seems obvious to two individuals who have the advantage of understanding the Greek, certainly is not obvious in the English version to someone who doesn't (myself).

Do you have a reference to mainstream scholarly analysis of this point?

spamandham

Ben, thanks for that explanation. I concede.

Ben C Smith

Thanks for listening, and for keeping an open mind.

Cheers.

Ben.

aa5874

I can't believe you made made Ben use his hypothetical re-writing of the passage to confound you.

Mr Wilmen Cave Wright PHD translated the passage without Ben's hypothetical re-writing.

The Greek words for "who go unmentioned in the histories of time" are likely to be missing.

Why did Mr Wilmen Cave Wright PHD omit those words? He didn't see them?

Jeffrey Gibson

Did you not see the expression τῶν τηνικαῦτα γνωριζομ�*νων ἐπιμνησθεὶς and how it is limited by ἐπὶ Τιβερίου γὰρ ἤτοι Κλαυδίου ταῦτα ἐγίνετο ταῦτα ἐγίνετο?

And where is your evidence that you are the expert in 1st century Palestinian Judaism and (now) in the writings of Julian that you claim to be?

Jeffrey

aa5874

Where do you get your Greek from? Please, translate to English.

Is this another hypothetical re-writing?