🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Dec18.211826.45778@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu>, miner@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu writes:

[Much learned stuff omitted]

> BTW in Ecclesiatical Latin, e.g., in the Vulgate, we
> even have genitive absolutes, in immitation of Greek:
> 
> 	Qui ostendunt opus legis scriptum in cordibus suis,
> 	testimonium reddente illis conscientia ipsorum, et inter
> 	se invicem cogitationum accusantium, aut etiam defendentium.
> 
> 	Who show the work of the law written in their hearts,
> 	their own conscience bearing testimony to them, and
> 	their thoughts accusing them, or even defending them
> 	to themselves.
> 
> 			- Rom. ii, 15.
> 
> Nunn gives this one and cites also Acts i, 8 and II Cor. x, 15.

I've checked these, and I think Nunn is simply wrong on the latter two.
The genitive NP + participle in Acts 1:8 seems to be a normal genitive
attached to the NP _virtutem_, though that is *not* the construction
in the Greek, which seems to have an absolute.  Perhaps Jerome misunder-
stood.  Anyway, it reads:

	sed accipietis virtutem supervenientis Spiritus sancti in vos...
	'but you will accept the power of the Holy Spirit coming over you...'

2 Cor 10:15 plainly has an adnominal genitive construction in Latin and,
I think, in Greek, but variant Latin readings with ablative absolute do
exist.  The key part of the verse reads:

	...spem autem habentes crescentis fuidei vestrae...
	'having hope in your growing faith'

Rom 2:15 is less certain.  My edition emends to an ablative absolute,
against all the manuscripts (at least, the respectable ones).  The
Greek seems ambiguous: kai metaxy alle:l:on to:n logismo:n kate:go-
rounto:n could be a new absolute, or it could depend on the NP in the
preceding genitive absolute.  Jerome seems to have taken the second
interpretation, so that the Vulgate passage could be translated:

	the awareness of themselves and of the thoughts that accuse
	or defend them (all) testifying against them ...

Still, the case for a genitive absolute can be made here, but it is
not ironclad.

--Leo Connolly