Hello all,
I have a question I would like to run past you regarding apposition. The concept was introduced to me recently as I made my way through Mounce’s BBG, and I thought I understoood it. But then today, as I was working on the workbook exercises for Chapter 10, an instance of apposition came up and I did not recognize it. After looking at the answer key and seeing how I should have translated it, I looked again at the sentence, but I can’t see how I should be recognizing, in this case, that this is some apposition going on. Here is the specific sentence I am talking about, from the BBG workbook, exercise 10 (track 1), sentence # 6, p.33:
ἕλεγεν περι τοῦ ναοῦ τοῦ σώματοs αὐτοῦ.
or, transliterated, if that is easier:
Elegen peri tou vaou tou somatos autou.
My (incorrect) translation was “He was speaking of the temple of his body.”
The answer key, however, says that that “his body” is in apposition, so it should be “temple that is his body.”
I understand that the “that is” part is an extra verb inserted in the translation for clarity, to show the apposition. What I don’t understand, though, is how to recognize that apposition is going on here. To me, it looks like, because these words are all genitive, that it’s “of the temple of his body.” How am I to recognize that that is not the case? Is it the του that blows that theory up?
Thanks for your help!
Scott
