Journal: Pneumatikos
Volume: PNEUMATIKOS 16:1 (Spring 2025)
Article: Brief Note "Response To Mark Mills’ Review Of" Interpretive Insights From The Genitive Absolute In The Greek New Testament
Author: Mark Perkins

Pneumatikos 16:1 (Spring 2025) p. 115

Brief Note
Response To Mark Mills’ Review Of Interpretive Insights From The Genitive Absolute In The Greek New Testament

Mark Perkins

Evanelia Tahiti
Paparā, Windward Islands,
French Polynesia

After my son read Dr. Mills’ review1 of Interpretive Insights,2 he texted me. “Don’t worry, Dad, the grammarians are always behind the linguists.” He is a good and wise young man. When I wrote Interpretive Insights, I knew well there would be plenty of head-scratching and opposition. I also looked forward to reading critiques for the purpose of refinement. For that reason, I truly appreciate the review in Pneumatikos vol. 15 no. 2. It helped me understand how other Greek scholars might see my work and challenge it. Certainly, this is good. At issue in my book is whether the Genitive Absolute carries semantic weight beyond its usual meaning as an adverbial participle, something that does not seem to be addressed in any Greek grammar textbook.

As for the review itself, I am grateful for the positives and the negatives. Let me respond to the negatives by first affirming that I did my homework. I openly admit that my take on the genitive absolute

Pneumatikos 16:1 (Spring 2025) p. 116

(GA) construction is not found in any grammar textbook. I searched many Greek grammars, even beyond the usual works of reference, to the more obscure (for New Testament scholars) like Smyth3 and others. Having come up with an idea about the semantics of the GA, I wanted to examine whether anyone else had noticed what I felt strongly about. Indeed, no one had. Instead of being defeated, this dead end motivated me to write the book. I expanded my research into scholarly discourse on absolute constructions in ancient literature, especially Antonia Ruppel’s Absolute Constructions in Early Indo-European,4 a work I read and re-read. There were hints from Ruppel concerning semantics and some help on what the GA is and is not. Her proper conclusion that the GA is not absolute is enough for any Greek scholar to return to the construction in its contexts to gain a new appreciation for the written Greek language. Ruppel also admitted that little was understood about the semantics of the GA and that more research was needed. Why would the ancient Greeks flip a participle to the front of a clause and put it into the genitive? It is eye-catching, to say the least! But did they do this without adding any mean...