John 2:24
 

I know what the translations we have say, but perhaps Solon or AA can help me out on the translation a bit, as it is awkward for me.

αὐτὸς δὲ Ἰησοῦς οὐκ ἐπίστευεν αὐτὸν αὐτοῖς διὰ τὸ αὐτὸν γινώσκειν πάντας

The reflexive autos is confusing me. We have it here four times.

The first four work okay, autos de IHsous ouk episteYen, but Jesus himself did not [here I want to say believe in, but I guess a better translation is entrust himself to]

However, the Autois dia to auton is a confusing structure. I guess to auton ginwskein pantas, is the themselves know all, so he knew them all.

The autois dia structure is weird for a beginner such as myself.

auton is the object and autois is a genitive plural, okay it's slowly sinking in.

Totally awkward verse.

αὑτὸν (accusative sing.) is a direct object of ἐπίστευεν.
αὐτοῖς (dative plural) is an indirect object.

"He didn't trust αὑτὸν to αὐτοῖς."

διὰ = "on account of" or "because."

τὸ γινώσκειν = articular infinitive (gerund), with αὐτὸν in the accusative both because it's governed by διὰ and because the subject of articular infinitives is always rendered in the accusative).

πάντας (accusative plural) is the object of γινώσκειν

αὐτὸς δὲ Ἰησοῦς οὐκ ἐπίστευεν αὑτὸν αὐτοῖς διὰ τὸ αὐτὸν γινώσκειν πάντας
Jesus himself did not trust himself to them because he knew them all.

I still don't understand how gerunds function in Greek, but the verse seems odd. It is just odd because it's Greek, or bad Koine Greek?

Thanks for your help. I suppose your students don't ask you such dumb questions.

No problem, and your questions are much smarter than the ones I get from students.

The gerund (I call it the articular infinitive) just acts like a noun. In English we usually translate it with -ing. So, the end of this verse, very literally translated, would say something like "because of the him knowing them."

It's not very good Greek - pretty crude. I suspect Attic would use participles instead of the aorist and articular infinitive.

For SU, here's an example of bad Greek in the Gospels and there's lots of it. It sure seems the NT letters and Gospels were cobbled together by persons speaking Greek as a second language.

Attic and Ionic Greek have their complexities but not due to awkwardness, just complexity.

And yes I'm aware of a gerund's translation, but it's the way gerunds relate to the words around them in Greek plus their formation which are weird. And they are stuck in weird places, so if one forces one's mind to think in Greek, it makes it an odd sensation. I try to see the Greek in Greek in order to comprehend it, and it doesn't flow even as well as the first part of Homer, which actually flows quite nicely once one has broken it down.

That sentence is one of the oddest constructions I've come across.

Your reference to the articular infinitive brings to mind this book and the attendant review I had read.

http://jimhamilton.wordpress.com/200...new-testament/

http://www.sheffieldphoenix.com/showbook.asp?bkid=51