Pronoun – Genitive, dative 2s

ObjectivesLearning objectives

• How the semantics of idiomatic phrases can be unpredictable
• The morphology of the gen, dat 2s pronouns

VocabularyVocabulary

NoteIdioms

Idioms are phrases where the meaning of the whole is not predictable from the meaning of each of the individual parts. For example, to say break a leg, Benaiah when Benaiah is about to sing a solo on stage is not a wish for his femur to snap, even though straightforwardly combining each of the individual parts would suggest such a meaning. Rather, the whole phrase itself means something distinct.

If you were to literally translate each individual word in the phrase ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου, you would end up with ‘the son of the man.’ Of course, if you are a ‘son’, it must be the case that you are the son of a man. This is an indication that the phrase may have an idiomatic meaning. When Jesus calls himself ‘the son of man,’ he is not saying that he is the son of a man. Rather, many scholars have recognized that Jesus is referring to the son of man phrase in Daniel 7 where it says that someone like a “son of man” came to the ancient of days, and he was given an everlasting kingdom. At least some scholars think that this title, as applied in Daniel 7, is a reference to a divine being, so when Jesus calls himself the “son of man,” he is calling himself divine. Ironically, this would lead to a meaning of the phrase that is not compositional at all. Jesus is the son of man in the sense that he is divine, and not in the sense that he is the offspring of a person. Idiomatic meanings are sometimes like this–they can be quite different than the sum of their parts.

MorphologyMorphology: Pronoun – Genitive, dative 2s

• The 2s forms are identical to the 1s forms except for the initial σ rather than μ.
• Both σου and σοι are enclitics.