Acts 2:38 Sentence Structure

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Sat Apr 17 08:21:41 EDT 1999


At 1:40 AM -0400 4/17/99, Lee Deavers wrote:
>In regards to  the greek text from Acts 2:38--
>
>METANOHSATE, [FHSIN,] KAI BAPTISQHTW hEKASTOS hUMWN EPI TWi ONOMATI IHSOU
>XRISTOU EIS AFESIN TWN hAMARTIWN hUMWN
>
>Why do you think the King James editors put a comma after the word repent?
>What effect does it have on the sentence if the sentence was diagramed?
>Here it is in the KJV:
>
>"Then Peter said unto them, Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the
>name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift
>of the Holy Ghost."

The most basic reason, I think, is that the two imperatives are of
different kinds and seem to refer to processes enjoined as related but
distinct from each other: METANOHSATE is a general command address to all
those present as a group--and in the second plural, while BAPTISQHTW
hEKASTOS hUMWN points to a baptism that ritualizes, whether one understands
that ritual as a symbol or as a concrete event, the repentance that each
has made; and here the imperative is in the 3d person aorist passive and,
although addressed to the whole group, points to each one individually as
one who by then will have repented: NOW that he/she has repented, each
individual is to be baptized.

>I am, by the way, new to this post but have already enjoyed the letters.
>I had one quarter of Koine Greek under Harvey Floyd at David Lipscomb
>University (1977) and
>intend to attempt this wonderful language again.

Welcome to B-Greek; we're glad to have you aboard. You will note that we
don't hesitate to tackle both the little questions and the big ones--the
ones we can't really handle very well--and sometimes we don't do a very
good job of handling the little ones either. But it is a congenial group,
and you will find that you get more than one reply to a question
usually--which is good: it means you have to decide between options for
yourself or possibly reject all the suggestions you're offered and find you
have to rethink the problem itself!

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
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/
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