Direct / Indirect Speech

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Wed Nov 25 10:57:50 EST 1998


At 9:43 AM -0500 11/25/98, James C. Williams wrote:
>>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.

I think everything that's been said hitherto is correct, but it clearly 
hasn't cleared up the problem. I'm not sure I can either, but I'll try. 
Here's the text in question:

Mt 24:5 For many shall come in my name, saying, I(Jesus) am Christ; and 
shall deceive many. POLLOI GAR ELEUSONTAI EPI TW ONOMATI MOU LEGONTES EGW 
EIMI O CRISTOS KAI POLLOUS PLANHSOUSIN.

(a) To start with, I'll note that in UBS4 and UBS3 the editor indicates 
that direct quotation begins with EGW EIMI by printing EGW with upper-case 
E; in NA27 the editor indicates this by using the raised dot, the normal 
Greek punctuation equivalent of a colon, immediately after LEGONTES. It is 
clear, therefore, that the editors of the standard GNT texts understand EGW 
EIMI hO CRISTOS as a direct quotation.

(b) Nevertheless, since the judgment of an editor or editorial committee is 
always open to question--although one ought to have done one's homework 
before questioning that judgment, I'd say--, the question is: what are the 
criteria on the basis of which the editor(s) have understood the EGW EIMI 
clause to be a direct quotation? And here we can tick off the standard ways 
in which this is done:
	(1) In classical Attic there are two common ways of indicating direct
quotation: a) by putting a hOTI in front of the direct quotation; this is 
still a standard way in the NT era, and I think beginning Greek students 
are commonly taught that a hOTI before a clause may often be translated 
with a quotation mark introducing a direct citation; b) another way is to 
sandwich a common verb form meaning "I said" or "s/he said" in the middle 
of a direct quotation (e.g. HN D'EGW or H D' hOS). As I recall, one 
sometimes sees this in Acts, but it's not really common in the GNT.
	(2) In Mt 24:5 there's no introductory hOTI and there's also no 
sandwiched form equivalent to "they will say"; nevertheless there is a 
clear indicator in the changed person and number of the verb: THEY will 
come, saying--but--I AM THE CHRIST. This, I think, is the real answer to 
the question of how we know this is a direct quotation.
	(3) Indirect quotation is more clear-cut in classical Attic: an 
introductory verb will be followed by an accusative-subject (a nominative 
if it's identical with the subject of the cited clause) and 
infinitive-predicate along with any modifiers; and one sees indirect 
quotation often enough in the GNT, although it doesn't fall as neatly into 
standard patterns as in classical Attic. Nevertheless, this is the pattern 
we would have, I think, if Matthew had meant, "Many will come in my name 
and say to you that I (i.e. Jesus) am the Christ"--and it would be phrased 
something like this: POLLOI GAR ELEUSONTAI EPI TWi ONOMATI MOU LEGONTES 
(FASKONTES) ME EINAI TON CRISTON.

I hope this helps.



Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics/Washington University
One Brookings Drive/St. Louis, MO, USA 63130/(314) 935-4018
Home: 7222 Colgate Ave./St. Louis, MO 63130/(314) 726-5649
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu OR cconrad at yancey.main.nc.us
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/



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