pster wrote:Thanks so much for putting that up there. I joined and cited the LSJ passage from above, but as a new member, my comment has to be approved.
I don't know for sure, but I agree with you that they are all predicate genitive in 1320. The other reading is definitely possible, but I don't recall having ever seen Smyth leave a gap quite like that. Still, they may very well be right.
My working hypothesis at the moment turns on the LSJ. Somehow I think that the difference between "the few of the same opinion fled" and "some few, being of the same opinion, fled" is important. Or some such distinction in that direction.
I am pretty sure you know, but I think it bears repeating. The issue is just about how a particular genitive of quality can be predicate. There are lots of predicate genitives. And many are verbless.
Really what it comes down to on b-greek is exegesis of Smyth, not whether Smyth is right or wrong but what is Smyth trying to demonstrate in the citations under 1320. I view 1320 and 1321 as a matched set where the first gives the
predicate genitive samples and the second gives
not predicate genitive samples. I think a reading of the first sentence in 1320 and 1321 makes this quite clear. But as with all things having to do with texts and interpretation there will always be disagreements and when some of the participants have taught classical greek at the graduate level for over half a century you have to understand that they know just as much about it as the guy who wrote the book you are reading.
BTW, I did find the same passage Th. 3.70.6 cited in Cooper in his five page long discussion of Predicate Genitive where he said:
A personal subject and an impersonal predicative genitive, usually an abstract of intellectual or moral significance, is not common. But the construction is of considerable interest because of its suggestion of obsession, ideology, or indelible character trait (A).
Guy L. Cooper III, Attic Greek Prose Syntax, vol. 1, p.175, section 47.6.10.
C. Stirling Bartholomew