autos as "predicative" in Lk 24:36?

Don Parker · 2025-05-31T15:55:37+00:00

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Along the lines of “learning something new everyday,” is there a NT Greek grammarian who would explain the description (in morphology/parsing of SBLGNT) of autos in Lk 24:36 as “intensive predicative” (maybe you even know the source for this morphology descriptor there?).

So, autos is nominative by form, subject by function, and emphatic (as redundant for the person in the explicit verb form and perhaps by w.o.), even “intensive” as a particular function of the pronoun: “to emphasize a subj. which has already been named” [(Horst Robert Balzand Gerhard Schneider, ExegeticalDictionary of the New Testament(Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1990–), 179, 1.], and so often rendered as “Jesus himself” in EVV.

In v. 39, I see how a somewhat similar use of autos might be described as “intensive predicative,” — making a statement, but there with an expressed subject in a clause with an explicit equative verb — when rendered, as in EDNT, “It is I myself.” [Even if such a rendering excludes any divine appellation there.]

Is the idea, in v. 36, sort of an underlying grammatical structure (echo from my past brief acquaintance with generative grammar): predicative of a subject already named — Jesus (v. 15, 19)/Messiah/Christ(v.26)/Lord (v. 34) — with an implied verb estin (or, as a Semitism, a nominal clause)/[a sort of embedded clause with S +Pred]: “Jesus is Himself, He-stood in their midst?”

At any rate, the Q is how should one understand autos as predicative in Lk 24.36?

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Justin Gatlin

When I did a search for αὐτὸς intensive predicative this turned up: Glossary of Morpho-Syntactic Database Terminology. Then I found a longer discussion in Learn to Read New Testament Greek and in Basics of Biblical Greek.

Don Parker

TY for your response.

I don't have these, or many other Greek grammar books, in my library, so can't access them. They might address this specific use of autos in Lk 24:36, but perhaps you might expound if they do?

I think "predicative" itself means something like "making a statement/predication, usually about a noun and that often a subject N," and that is indeed similar within the definition of "intensive predicative" in the glossary ("is in predicate position with respect to a noun"), but my Q is precisely how is autos in predicate position with respect to a noun in Lk 24:36.

First there is no explicit referential noun in the clause and, for example, checking the SBL diagram, autos is placed in the subject position, not as a predicate nominative. I was wondering precisely what is the "predicate position" autos occupies in this verse, whether this "predicative" function here should be considered a discourse function descriptor beyond the clause level or an underlying grammatical description on the clause level or what exactly? Just was hoping for a bit more enlightenment.

Don Parker

To say a word is “predicative,” to me, says “This word makes a predication/statement.”
What is the predication autos makes in Lk 24:36?

I posited two ways it may do so on a “deep grammar” level vs.surface structure.
Using an English example, “I, myself, wrote this,” — at a deep grammar level — one may see two predications (or describe it as containing an embedded clause): “I am myself; I wrote this.”
Is that what is meant by describing autos as predicative in this verse?( Rather than simply describing autos as a “reflexive pronoun” (EBC; which I suspect is how many beginning Greek grammars describe this particular usage, rather than as “predicative.”)
Or maybe “predicative” means that semantically, being self-referential, there is a built-in predication for words like myself/himself/herself?
Or is the predication found in the larger discourse, indicating he/himself is Jesus?
Or some other kind of predication?
Just trying first to understand how the term “predicative” is used for this word in this verse, and then to consider how it might be helpful in understanding the verse and a better descriptor than reflexive or appositional (He, Jesus; cf. If one were to substitute a personal name in the above ex.: I, George, etc.) or even attributive (possible descriptor via SBL diagramming of autos in v. 39?).

Tangentially, it is perhaps of passing interest to consider the Hebrew nominal clause ani hu', “I (am) He” (similar phrasing, or "You are He," in multiple OT texts). This is a simple/single predication and the pronoun there is a predicate nominative, so "predicative" patently could be applied there.
In that instance, however, many propose “He” is a divine appellation/”an emph. predicate, of God” (EnBDB, 216, 5. Perhaps, ironically, similar to “We” in the Quran.). Then again, might anyone dare wonder if Luke could have been influenced by such OT references, so as to imply that “HE (non-reflexive and not predicative) – God Yahweh – stood in their midst?”