Participle – Efagon Active

Instead of using the construction ἦν κακὸν ποιῶν, John could have said ἐποίει κακόν ‘was doing evil.’ In either case, the verb would be interpreted as Jesus habitually doing evil.

The meaning of ἐστίν in Luo + Luo participle is less clear:

• (278) With Luo οὐ γάρ ἐσμεν ὡς οἱ πολλοὶ καπηλεύοντες τὸν λόγον τοῦ θεοῦ (2 Cor 2:17)

We are not, like many others, traders in the word of God

The participle καπηλεύοντες ‘traders’ is in the Luo form and combines with the previous Luo εἰμί verb. Another possible analysis of many of these constructions is to take the participle as a noun instead of a verb. The verb εἰμί can take a predicate noun after it that refers to the group the subject belongs to, e.g. ἔσμεν μαθηταί ‘we are students.’ If the participle is used as a noun, the construction we see in 2 Cor 2:17 can be interpreted in the same way, meaning simply ‘we are not traders’ instead of ‘we are not trading.’ Indeed, this is probably the better analysis.

Finally, the Luso form can be used with a Luo participle to refer to events in progress:

• (279) With Luso καὶ οἱ ἀστέρες ἔσονται ἐκ τοῦ οὐρανοῦ πίπτοντες (Mark 13:25)

The stars will be falling from the sky

The verb ἔσονται is in Luso, which marks the event as future tense. The Luo participle πίπτοντες describes what will be in the midst of happening in that future time. Although Luso can be used to refer to the middle of states (25.1.3.2), it is not used on its own to refer to events in progress. For this meaning, the periphrastic participle is used. This distinguishes the Luso periphrastic participle from Eluon and Luo, since the latter two forms do have parallel uses that are essentially equivalent in meaning to the periphrastic participle.