Use of article in Septuagint

[Paul]

Hi,

Can someone with LXX experience explain the syntax and semantics of the first article here (from Genesis 2:16):

ἀπὸ παντὸς ξύλου τοῦ ?ν τῷ πα?αδείσῳ...

translated as "from every tree in the garden..." or "from every tree of the garden...".

If ξύλου and τοῦ form a syntagm, then I don't understand why the article follows its noun. Or, is τοῦ functioning here like a relative/demonstrative, e.g., "from every tree THOSE in the garden..."?

I see this pattern throughout the book of Genesis.

Thanks.

Cordially,

Paul

[IreneY]

It is indeed from every "paradisian" tree so to speak. Του makes the?ν τῷ πα?αδείσῳ an "adjective". I'd probably translate it "... every tree that exists in paradise"

[Paul]

Beautiful; thanks Irene.

It almost sounds as if you're suggesting that this is a case of the 3rd attributive position (cf. Smyth 1159) - something that simply didn't occur to me.

But I am reluctant to assert this if only because of the strange way in which the Septuagint was "translated."

Cordially,

Paul

[IreneY]

Sorry for the delay but I got stuck in the terminology department (no Smyth around my house). If I got what 3rd attributive position does mean then I guess that's what I suggest (not the most definite answer I could give, I know)

I'm afraid I don't know much about the "translation" of Septuagint so I'm not quite sure to what you refer to.

[Paul]

I'm afraid I don't know much about the "translation" of Septuagint so I'm not quite sure to what you refer to.

Hi Irene,

Sorry for the cryptic remark. I know very little about the translation of the Septuagint. But many authorities seem to agree that its authors, while preserving original word order, simply translated each Hebrew word into Greek, applying as needed grammatical categories like case, person, number, ktl.

Hence it's not "good" greek. You wouldn't study the Septuagint to learn the fairest expression of the Greek language. More to the point, because the Hebrew word order was preserved, it's risky to say that a particular construction is an instance of, say, Greek's 3rd attributive position. It may simply be an accident of the original word order.

Cordially,

Paul

[IreneY]

Ah! Now I see (I should have thought about it myself, it's not your remark that was cryptic, it's my brain that is lazy).

In this case it's an accidental 3rd attributive then I mean that I have no idea how it would be described in Hebrew, what is its role in the original, but it does come off as such in the ancient Greek translation.