Bill Mounce

For an Informed Love of God

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Thursday, March 14, 2019

When Greek does not Supply a Direct Object (Phil 3:12)

I have started my Thursday edition of Monday with Mounce (and yes, I need a different name for the blog). Today's blog is on Philippians 3:12 and what to do when a Greek transitive verb does not have a direct object.

Thursday blogs are targeted especially to people using the Bible Study Greek approach, which uses my textbook Greek for the Rest of Us, to learn enough Greek to go deeper in their Bible study but doesn't require massive amounts of memorization and repetition.

I haven't decided whether to send out the blog and run the risk of plugging up your inbox. But if you subscribe to my YouTube channel, then you will be notified when a new episode is available. The episode is here: https://youtu.be/ZEg24OrUu_0

Comments

Submitted by Garth D. Wiebe on Sun, 2019-03-17 03:02
I'm wondering whether you did this on purpose to see if anyone would catch it. 
 In the second paragraph it is not clear what the subject of the verb phrase, "doesn't require," is. Is it the "people," the "blogs," the "approach," or the "textbook"? I don't think it is "people" or "blogs," because they are plural and "doesn't" is singular. I think you are referring to the "approach" (the "approach...doesn't require," not "the textbook...doesn't require"), so there should be a comma after the word, "study," before the word, "but." This would be clearer if you said, "but which doesn't require massive amounts of memorization and repetition," inserting the word, "which." Otherwise, it appears that the sentence is not a parallel construction: "to learn...to go...but doesn't require" (infinitive phrase mixed with verb phrase). 
 Also, there should be a comma after "textbook," setting off "Greek for the Rest of Us" as an appositive. Otherwise, one might assume that "textbook" is used as an adjective, as in "textbook Greek," such that "textbook Greek" is "used" for whatever the proper noun phrase, "Rest of Us" refers to.

Submitted by Bill Mounce on Thu, 2019-03-21 06:30
Just drop out the "which" clause, which is set off with commas, and you will see what I am saying.

Submitted by Garth D. Wiebe on Fri, 2019-03-22 19:16
¶ Which "which" clause? Yours, as written in your blog post, or mine, as proposed in my reply? ¶ If yours, then we have, "Thursday blogs are targeted especially to people using the Bible Study Greek approach to learn enough Greek to go deeper in their Bible study but doesn't require massive amounts of memorization and repetition." ¶ If mine, then we have, "Thursday blogs are targeted especially to people using the Bible Study Greek approach, which uses my textbook[,] Greek for the Rest of Us, to learn enough Greek to go deeper in their Bible study." ¶ Either way, I find it interesting, the analogy between needing to supply missing components in the Greek and needing to supply missing components in English. Just as your readers understand that, one way or another, they are not going to need "massive amounts of memorization and repetition," regardless of the English grammar of your post being specific, a reader will understand what the object of the transitive verbs of Philippians 3:12 are. In both cases the writer already previously supplied that information.