Direct / Indirect Speech

James C. Williams williams at anatomy.iupui.edu
Wed Nov 25 09:43:54 EST 1998


>Subject: Re: Direct / Indirect Speech
>From: Jim Beale <beale at uconect.net>
>Date: Tue, 24 Nov 1998 15:45:38 -0500
>X-Message-Number: 23
>
>At 3:12 PM +0000 11/24/98, Jim West wrote:
>
>>>Take for instance these two sentences.
>>>
>>>1. Many will come and say I am the Christ and decieve many.
>>>2. Many will come and say: "I am the Christ"; and decieve many.
>>
>>I dont see any difference between these 2 sentences.
>
>Jim,
>
>I think Juan means to say:
>
>1. Many will come and say I [meaning Jesus] am the Christ ...
>2. Many will come and say I [meaning themselves] am the Christ ...
>
>The differentiation between these two interpretations
>is made clear by the context.  It seems obvious that
>Jesus is not warning us against those who come and
>point to the true Messiah, doesn't it?  That would be
>an outrageous interpretation of Jesus's words.

I don't see how the context drives that conclusion.  Just tune in to TV
preachers and you are likely to hear someone pointing to Jesus as the
Messiah and yet leading many astray ("your faith is a force; if you use the
force correctly, you will change your reality" and other such stuff).  It
is outrageous, but it happens all the time, so it is possible that Jesus
could mean that.

But I still have not seen an answer to Juan's question about the ability of
Greek text to distinguish direct and indirect quotation.

Yet another wee greeker,
(and yet another) Jim.






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