Casus pendens, non-verbal predicate and subject

[Paul Younan]

Shlama Akhi Dave,

Exactly what is a "Casus Pendens" ? I gather from Gesenius Hebrew Grammar that it involves a participle.

In traditional Semitic grammar a "casus pendens" is a fronted nominal element, usually an introductory comment, that constitutes a clause by itself.

It seems that your subject always includes the main verb and that the non verbal predicate is usually a predicate nominative, renaming the subject in the previous category which you call casus pendens.

Yes, exactly. There are many more syntactical constructions, like this, that are exclusive to Semitic literature and style. The idea is, of course, that if we can show the Greek NT to follow these odd (for Indo-European languages) constructs, like the LXX does, then it would naturally follow that the Greek translators of the Aramaic NT followed the same "protocol" as those Greek translators of the Hebrew OT.

They, most probably being Semites who were bilingual in Aramaic~Greek, viewed the original text in front of them as sacred. When translating, they (like the translators of the LXX) chose to remain ultra-literal to the underlying text, even at the expense of "good Greek grammar."