| 6. Linguistic Exegesis The verse opens with the aorist participle dielthontes {διελθόντες | di-el-thón-tes} ‘having gone through’, which sets up a circumstantial clause of prior action relative to the main verb. The participle is followed by the postpositive conjunction de {δὲ | de}, marking narrative progression. The object of the participle is expressed by the accusive phrase holen ten neson {ὅλην τὴν νῆσον | hó-lēn tēn nê-son} ‘the whole island’, emphasizing the completeness of their journey. The prepositional phrase achri Paphou {ἄχρι Πάφου | á-khri pá-phou} ‘as far as Paphos’ uses the genitive to indicate the limit or endpoint of their travel. The main narrative action appears with heuron {εὗρον | heû-ron} ‘they found’, which introduces the encounter. What they found is elaborated in a series of accusative expressions in apposition: andra tina magon pseudopropheten Ioudaion {ἄνδρα τινὰ μάγον ψευδοπροφήτην Ἰουδαῖον | án-dra ti-ná má-gon pseu-do-pro-phē-tēn I-ou-daî-on}, forming a compact character sketch: first a generic ‘man’, then specified as ‘a certain’ one, and further defined as ‘magician’, ‘false prophet’, and ‘Jewish’. The relative clause hoi onoma Bariesou {ᾧ ὄνομα Βαριησοῦ | hôi ó-no-ma ba-ri-ē-soû} uses a dative relative pronoun with a predicate nominative ‘name’ to give his name, a common Greek idiom literally meaning ‘to whom the name was Bar-Jesus’. English rendering smooths the participial construction into a temporal clause and rearranges the appositional list into natural descriptive order while preserving the cumulative characterization and the climactic placement of the name. |