| 30. Linguistic Exegesis The participle legontes {λέγοντες | lé-gon-tes} ‘saying’ functions as a circumstantial participle denoting the onlookers’ speech. The conjunction hoti {ὅτι | hó-ti} introduces direct discourse, here rendered by quotation marks. The demonstrative phrase houtos ho anthropos {Οὗτος ὁ ἄνθρωπος | hoû-tos ho án-thrō-pos} deictically identifies a specific individual. The aorist middle erxato {ἤρξατο | ḗr-xa-to} plus the present infinitive oikodomein {οἰκοδομεῖν | oi-ko-do-meîn} form a periphrastic complex meaning “began to build.” The coordinating conjunction kai {καὶ | kaí} links this action to the result clause, where the negation ouk {οὐκ | ouk} precedes the aorist active ischysen {ἴσχυσεν | ís-khy-sen} with complementary infinitive ektelesai {ἐκτελέσαι | ek-te-lé-sai}, expressing a definitive inability to complete the project. English requires an explicit subject “he” for each finite verb, and the structural shift from Greek infinitive to English infinitive constructions is handled by adding “to” and maintaining parallelism. |