[mikenoel]

I'm working through Machen on my own. I'm up to chapter 9 and things are going reasonably well. The use of this/that and "further uses of aujtovV" is killing me though.

I'm working on the translations from greek to english at the end of the chapter. It's not going as smoothly as I would like. I'm particularly stuck on number 15:

ajgaqhv ejstin hJ ejpaggeliva sou kai; ajgaqh; ei\ aujthv

I've gotten as far as:

A good woman is the promise of you and [good you are she]

I think this is correct up to the stuff in [. But then I'm stuck. Without the "she" I could see "you are good" since "you are" takes the nominative. Without the "good" I could see "you are she" for the same reason. I can't see "she is good" because in that case ejstivn would have been used.

I thought it might be that aujthv was referring to the subject of the sentence using the intensifier concept so that the result is:

A good woman, herself, is the promise of you and you are good.

But I don't know if it works for the aujthv to be all the way at the end like that.

Clearly I am missing something. What is it?
_________________
Mike Noel (http://www.vnoel.com)

[Klaas]

ἀγαθή ἐστιν ἡ ἐπαγγελία σου καὶ ἀγαθὴ εἶ αὐτή
good is the promise/announcement of-yours and good you-are self -->good is your promise/announcement and good are you yourself!

ἀγαθή means ‘good’ (female form), not ‘good woman’ [that’s ἀγαθὴ γυνή].
As for αὐτός: it means ‘( [him/her/them]-selves/selves’ whenever it’s within a sentence that has a personal pronoun (or an implicit, non expressed pronoun) or a noun which has the same case/gender/number as the αὐτός-pronoun.
Immediately after an article it means ‘(the) same’.
When it stands alone, it means ‘(to) him/her/them’ etc.

Εἴδομεν αὐτόν. We’ve seen him (stands alone)
Εἴδομεν τὸν βασιλέα αὐτόν. We’ve seen the king himself. (accompanying noun with same gender/number/case)
Εἴδομεν (ἡμεῖς) αὐτοὶ τὸν βασιλέα. We’ve seen the king ourselves (accompanying [implicit] pronoun with same gender/number/case)
Εἴδομεν τὸν αὐτὸν ἄνδρα. We’ve seen the same man (immediately after article).

Now, in ‘ἀγαθὴ εἶ (συ) αὐτή’ there’s an implicit pronoun, that we can deduce from the verb [σύ].
_________________
כח גַּם אֱוִיל מַחֲרִישׁ, חָכָם יֵחָשֵׁב
(משלי פרק יז)

[mikenoel]

Thanks for your reply. It makes perfect sense now that it has been explained.

How did you know that αγαθή (agaqh) was the "subject" of the phrase rather than the object? Couldn't it have been "the promise is good"? Both ("good" and "the promise") are in the nominative case but "the promise" is a noun while "good" is an adjective.

This is what confused me. When I saw ἀγαθή (agaqh) I assumed that this was a case of the adjective playing the role of a noun as implied by the gender and number of the adjective. For example, consider:

βλέπομεν ὁι ἀγαθοί (blepomen oi agaqoi)

Should be "we see the good men", right? In that case the adjective stands for a noun. Are there some clues that indicate that the adjective is in this role?
_________________
Mike Noel (http://www.vnoel.com)

[stephenR]

In the first phrase, you have two nominatives: agaqh and ejpaggelia, so they must both be the subject, and one of them (the predicate) is in opposition to the other. Since ejpaggelia is a simple noun, it must be the true subject, and ajgaqh is the predicate: 'Your promise is good'

Stephen

[stephenR]

How did you know that αγαθή (agaqh) was the "subject" of the phrase rather than the object?


agaqh has no article, so it is not a substantive. ejpaggelia does have an article, so it is the subject.

Stephen

[mikenoel]

Ok. Now that I think about it I realize that both "the promise is good" and "good is the promise" mean that same thing and the words are all playing the same roles.

Thanks for clarifying.
_________________
Mike Noel (http://www.vnoel.com)