Matthew 4:24, The Swing Position and Proximal and Distal Dependents

καὶ προσήνεγκαν αὐτῷ

πάντας τοὺς κακῶς ἔχοντας ποικίλαις νόσοις

καὶ βασάνοις συνεχομένους

[καὶ] δαιμονιζομένους

καὶ σεληνιαζομένους καὶ παραλυτικούς

And they brought him

all those who had it bad with various diseases

and were oppressed with torments

and demonized

and moonstruck and paralytic.

How should the two datives in this clause be diagrammed?

The main clause has five coordinated direct objects (DO), which are apparently regularly coordinated with one καὶ coordinating conjunction between each pair of conjuncts.

Between ἔχοντας and συνεχομένους in the swing position are two dative nouns νόσοις καὶ βασάνοις, which could potentially both modify either participial DO or be split between them as shown in option 1. The syntactical decisions are (1) what are the heads of the two datives, and (2) which conjuncts does the καὶ between them coordinate, the datives or the accusatives?

Text editors can sometimes answer syntactical questions like these by placing a single comma after ἔχοντας. This comma indicates that καὶ joins the two datives, which are agents of the passive συνεχομένους which then becomes asyndeton. We will call this option 2. Some GNT text editors place the comma and some do not. The ones who do not are non-committal.

Option 2 is naturally suggested by the καὶ between the two immediate datives, which would normally join them. However, if the writer had wanted to make this connection explicit, he could have forced it by adding another καὶ before συνεχομένους so that συνεχομένους would not be asyndeton.

The parallel passage in Mark 1:32, using the common idiom κακῶς ἔχοντας “to have it bad,” also takes an adverbial dative, which is not the usual agent this time since the verb is not passive. So we know that the syntax of option 1 is valid.

How do the translators settle these options? Some select option 1, and some select option 2. Which one is correct? The answer is that Greek had a third option that is not available to the English at all, namely that, in the swing position, they could both modify both participles. The swing position even operates sometimes for uncoordinated words.

Can the diagram represent this option? Yes, but not directly. The diagram is hierarchical and each word has only one proximal head. However, besides the proximal connections, GC syntax also often supplies a set of distal connections. The dependent of one conjunct may and often does serve elliptically as the distal dependent of another conjunct in the same coordinate construction. The tightly defined distal dependents are a major elliptical feature of coordinate constructions in the GNT; GC has hundreds of them.

The reason that GC chooses option 1 over option 2 for the proximal syntax is because it is even and regular, not mixing syndeton with asyndeton. However, that is not exclusive; in the bigger picture, GC lets both datives modify both participles with the proximal and distal connections, as the original probably does implicitly with the swing position without becoming repetitive.

The swing position is a writer option that could always be avoided by repositioning the dependents if the writer wanted to separate the connections. Although this verse focuses on the swing dependent, the majority of distal dependents are not swing dependents. The most common distal dependent is the article. In Mark 16:14, τὴν ἀπιστίαν αὐτῶν καὶ σκληροκαρδίαν “their unfaithfulness and hardheartedness,” τὴν and αὐτῶν are proximal modifiers of ἀπιστίαν and distal modifiers of σκληροκαρδίαν.

—Dennis Kenaga