The Interpretation and Translation of Verbs of "Giving" in the New Testament 121 of the Greek verb as the Patient of the English verb of Effect. This permits the English verb of “giving” to retrieve the content of its null Patient complement from the Patient complement of the following verb and to introduce the implication that the action and Patient are for an entity other than the Agent, as in the following occurrence of δίδωμι: Others fell on the good soil and gave and produced [[for the sower, cf. 13,3]] its fruit [[which became the sower’s]] (Matt 13,8) ἄλλα δὲ ἔπεσεν ἐπὶ τὴν γῆν τὴν καλὴν καὶ ἐδίδου καρπόν With this usage, χαρίζομαι is best translated by “forgive” with the English usage of Benefactiom. The Patient consistently is –animate and designates “a debt” owed to the Agent and the Benefactive consistently is +animate (an Agent forgives something for someone). Care in translation is necessary because the English “forgive” also appears with a usage in which the verb requires completion by an Agent, a Patient, and a Topic (the topic of focus of a mental state, event, or activity). With the latter usage, the Patient consistently is +animate and the Topic consistently is –animate and designates “an offense” (an Agent forgives someone for / about something). Since χαρίζομαι presents no comparable Greek usage, it requires translation by “forgive” with the usage of Benefaction in all occurrences. The Benefactive has three realizations. The κατά (against) prepositional phrase with a genitive object (P/κατά [+gen]) realizes only the +animate Benefactive. The ὑπέρ (for, on behalf of) prepositional phrase with a genitive object (P/ὑπέρ [+gen]) realizes both the +animate and the –animate Benefactive. N+dat (for) realizes both the +animate and the –animate Benefactive with δίδωμι but only the +animate Benefactive with χαρίζομαι. The null Benefactive may be either definite or indefinite. The indefinite null Benefactive has the interpretation, “whoever other than the Agent that appropriately may benefit from the action”. The P/κατά [+gen, +an] Benefactive appears on only one occasion:20 As this example clarifies, the Benefactive relationship encompasses both benefaction and malefaction. Here Jesus becomes the one for / against whom the plot exists: Coming out, immediately the Pharisees with the Herodians made against him a plot [[which became his]] (Mark 3,6) ἐξελθόντες οἱ Φαρισαῖοι εὐθὺς μετὰ τῶν 'Ηρῳδιανῶν συμβούλιον ἐδίδουν κατ᾽ αὐτοῦ 20 This singular NT occurrence coheres with the LXX, in which P/κατά [+gen] governs the +animate Locative complement of δίδωμι in 1 Sam 22,15.