Subjunctive in Mt. 16:28

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Sat Sep 19 07:41:15 EDT 1998


At 1:01 AM -0500 9/19/98, Phylax (identifying himself as Steven Schultz) wrote:
>    Looking at Matthew 16:28, there there are two subjunctives:
>
>... hOITINES OU MH GEUSWNTAI QANATOU EWS AN IDWSIN TON UION TOU ANQRWPOU
>ERCOMENON ...
>
>    I would expect GEUOMAI to be in the indicative and don't know what to
>make of it in the subjunctive.

The aorist subjunctive with OU MH may be used, as here, as an absolute
assurance of a future happening: "who will SURELY not taste death ..."  I'm
not sure about the whole history of the construction; one quite commonly
sees OU MH + aorist subjunctive 2nd person forms as powerful imperatives;
this may go back all the way to the Homeric use of the subjunctive to serve
as a future.

The second subjunctive with hEWS AN is certainly a more common sort of
clause of anticipation: "until x has occurred."

I personally believe--but this is not the forum to argue the case--that the
phrasing in the passage you've cited derives from Mark's original in Mk 9:1:

AMHN LEGW hUMIN hOTI EISIN TINES hWDE TWN hESTHKOTWN hOITINES OU MH
GEUSWNTAI QANATOU hEWS AN IDWSIN THN BASILEIAN TOU QEOU ELHLUQUIAN EN
DUNAMEI.

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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