Ἔπρεπεν γὰρ αὐτῷ, διʼ ὃν τὰ πάντα καὶ διʼ οὗ τὰ πάντα, πολλοὺς υἱοὺς εἰς δόξαν ἀγαγόντα τὸν ἀρχηγὸν τῆς σωτηρίας αὐτῶν διὰ παθημάτων τελειῶσαι.
I’m struggling to understand why ἀγαγόντα is acc. here. Is this an example of accusative absolute being used circumstantially for the personal verb ἄγω? (Smyth 2078)
Or is τὸν θεόν understood here i.e. πολλοὺς υἱοὺς εἰς δόξαν ἀγαγόντα τὸν θεόν…τελειῶσαι being an acc. + inf. construction?
Thanks. --Mitch
It’s not an acc.absolute, it’s just that the dative has been left behind and the syntax has naturally shifted to (acc.&)inf. “It was fitting for him … that after leading many sons into glory he perfected the archegos of their salvation through sufferings.”
Odd that it’s ἀγαγόντα and not ἄγοντα. The leading of the sons to glory would not have been conceived of as coming temporarily before the suffering at the cross, and the KJV tradition seems more correct in translating with a “in bringing many sons to glory”. My Vulgate has adduxit (which would match the KJV translation tradition), but lists adduxerat (closer to Michael’s “after leading”) as a manuscript variant.
Maybe ἀγαγόντα could be one of those things nobody likes to mention, a “complexive aorist”?
Joel I think it’s ἀγαγόντα here because aorist is perfective aspect which presents the action as a single whole i.e. the simple fact of “bringing” many sons to glory. If it had been the present participle ἄγοντα which is imperfective aspect, that would highlight the intermediate stages of the action and ignore the endpoints i.e. in the process of many sons being brought to glory. See CGCG 33.6 etc.
CGCG 52.4-5 also says that while “aorist participles usually express actions anterior (before) the matrix verb, they are not infrequently used to refer to an action which does not precede, but coincides with the action of the matrix verb (the so-called coincident aorist participle). The aorist is then used to refer to the action in its entirety” i.e. perfective aspect.
So I think “bringing” or “leading” is probably better here, not “after bringing” or “after leading”.
My two cents from the Peanut Gallery 
This switching into an accusative is not uncommon. If you think that the clause πολλους …τελειωσαι is the subject of ἐπρεπε rather than “it”, that may make the accusative seem more natural as the subject is now a straight accusative and infinitive clause.
Mitch, Yes I agree the participle is probably best taken here as a so-called “coincident” aorist. But that’s a matter of theologically informed interpretation. As far as the Greek itself goes it could just as well (or better) be taken as Indicating anteriority.
DavidCart takes the acc.& inf. as the subject, but he doesn’t translate it, nor does he note that the infinitive has no expressed subject, and it seems to me better—more fitting—to respect the structure of the Greek by saying “It was fitting for him …” v.sim. at the outset. It’s an impersonal verb, after all, and it begins the sentence.
It is difficult for me to read the Hebrews author, who has a lot to say on this, as implying that God brings many sons to glory at the same time as he perfects Christ on the cross (coincident aorist). The many sons seem explicitly to be the later Christians who don’t exist yet. The use of a word like “ἀρχηγός” only strengthens this.
Going by Smyth 1872, we see examples of antecedent aorist, coincident, subsequent (rare), ingressive and complexive, or perfect. Of these, only subsequent or complexive seem possible in the context.
I wonder how much validity Smyth’s classification system still has, if indeed it was ever more than a taxonomical hodge-podge. We don’t often hear of the “empiric” aorist today. His “complexive” aorist (presumably German-derived) seems particularly messy, and according to the OED complexive is an obsolete word “last recorded around the late 1600s.” In any case, modern linguistics has significantly revamped the analytical framework, especially when it comes to the tenses.
Well, Goodwin 898 says: “many verbs in the third person singular have an infinitive or a sentence as their subject. These are called “impersonal” verbs. Such are πρεπει and προσηκει it is proper…”, and he quotes ἐνεστι, ἐξεστι, δοκει, συμβαινει. also δει and χρη, where with δει ἡμας ἀπελθειν, ἀπελθειν is the subject of δει.
I guess the translation here would be “Having led many sons into glory to perfect the archegos of their salvation through sufferings was fitting for him…..”. The entire accusative and infinitive clause is the subject.
That’s a travesty of a translation, flying in the face of how the sentence actually runs, with επρεπεν up front.