Verb – Luso participles and infinitives

ObjectivesLearning objectives

• The morphology of Luso participles and infinitives
• The meaning of Luso participles and infinitives
• A summary of the meaning of Luso

VocabularyVocabulary

MorphologyMorphology: Verb – Luso participles and infinitives

• Luso ptcps (found 13 times in the NT) combine σ with the -ων endings (see 18.2.3.1; compare to the -ας endings of Elusa ptcps in 27.1.3.1)
• The act masc sg ptcp form is found 9 times
• Relevant NT forms:
• act: σώσων (gen σώσοντος)
• mid forms: ἐσόμενος (gen ἐσομένου), ἐσόμενον (neut)
• psv forms: λαληθησόμενος
• There are only 5 Luso infs and only 2 different verbs (both mid): ἔσεσθαι and εἰσελεύσεσθαι

NoteLuso participles

Luso participles refer to an eventuality that is future relative to some other time. In actuality, this is true of all Luso verbs (see discussion below), but since participles are more commonly related to a time other than the time of speaking, Luso participles regularly receive a relative future interpretation, such as relating a future eventuality in the narrative to another past eventuality:

The pluperfect ἐληλύθει refers to a past event. The future participle προσκυνήσων is future relative to the past event of coming, and it is best taken as a purpose clause here (which we have translated into English with an infinitive). Luso participles may also be future relative to a future (hypothetical) eventuality:

Again, σώσων is best understood as referring to a purpose of Elijah, but this purpose is related to a hypothetical event, namely Elijah coming to save Jesus. Besides these verbal uses, the Luso participle can also be used nominally to refer to an individual who will engage in a future event, again either relative to a past event (John 6:64) or relative to a present circumstance (Rom 8:34).

NoteLuso infinitives

The Luso infinitive ἔσεσθαι ‘to be’ is only found in Acts and almost always with μέλλειν (only Acts 23:30 lacks it and even there it is found in some textual witnesses). Like the participle, it is often used in narrative to refer to a future time relative to a past event:

Agabus’s prediction of a famine occurred in the past, but the time of the famine itself, referred to in the phrase μέλλειν ἔσεσθαι, is future relative to the past prediction.

NoteLuso summary

The Luso form is used in the following ways with the additional note that it is compatible with both eventive and stative eventualities (see 1.4.4).

All uses of the Luso form involve the time being talked about occurring after some salient temporal anchor. This temporal anchor is often, but not always, the time of speaking (as examples from this lesson have demonstrated). When used as a deontic modal, the subject is under an obligation to perform the action, but the action is still in the future. When the temporal anchor refers to a time in a hypothetical world/scenario, Luso is interpreted as a logical future. These nuanced interpretations notwithstanding, the meaning contributed by Luso is one of temporal posteriority, though care must be taken to determine what two time intervals are being related.