Fwd: Re: Translating Mark 9:35
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Tue Aug 10 13:42:52 EDT 1999
>At 7:34 AM -0500 8/10/99, Ray Clendenen wrote:
>>Prof. Conrad's note ("However, one of the more common Semitisms found in NT
>>Koine is use of the
>>future indicative FOR an imperative;") caught my attention because I had
>>just read in Porter's _Idiom Book_ p. 44 that "although [the volitive use]
>>of the future form is frequently analyzed as the result of Semitic
>>influence, classical Greek parallels indicate that the most that can be
>>argued here is that Semitic usage enhanced an already possible Greek
>>usage."
To which I replied:
>This may well be true; I'd like to see the evidence for it. My suspicion is
>that it may be somewhat comparable to the recent melding together of the
>senses of "you shall" and "you will"--which two phrases once had very
>distinct meanings. What I'm curious to learn more about is whether this
>alleged usage of the future in an imperatival sense antedates the
>Hellenistic period. If someone has direct information on this, I'd like to
>learn about it, but I'll try to find out what i can about it further
>independently.
Here now is what the first edition of Smyth's grammar has to say on this
subject (from the Perseus web site)
Herbert Weir Smyth Greek Grammar (First Edition) 1910
FUTURE INDICATIVE
------------------------------------------------------------------------
1917. Jussive Future.--The future may express a command, like the
imperative; and, in the second person, may denote concession or [p. 429]
permission. The negative is ou. The tone of the jussive future (which is
post-Homeric) is generally familiar.
hôs oun poiêsete you will do thus Plat. Prot. 338a, anagnôsetai ton
nomon--anagignôske the clerk will read the law--read Dem. 24.39, autos
gnôsei you will judge for yourself Plat. Phileb. 12a, spoudê estai tês
hodou you will have to hurry on the march Thuc. 7.77, hu_meis oun, ea_n
sôphronête, ou toutou all' hu_môn pheisesthe now, if you are wise, you will
spare, not him, but yourselves Xen. Hell. 2.3.34.
I find it interesting how Smyth translates these clauses: he makes them
sound very much like English future indicatives that clearly have an
imperatival sense but are not couched as direct commands.
These are significant examples, to be sure, and I think I might modify my
earlier assertion that the future indicative used in an imperatival sense
is a Semitism to say that Hebrew usage surely seems to play a major role in
its expanded presence in the LXX and in the GNT. In my first response on
this thread this morning, I said: "it is curious that only Matthew
preserves the future tenses of the LXXin Mt 19:18-19, while Mk 10:19 and Lk
18:20 show these commandmentsformulated in the more standard absolute
injunction format as aorist
subjunctives." I don't want to speculate here on reasons for the different
grammatical formulation of these commandments in each of the Synoptic
gospels (although I am inclined to suspect that "Matthew" deliberately pays
homage to the LXX formulation while "Mark" and "Luke" prefer more standard
Greek formulations), but it is quite evident that we don't find future
indicative used for imperative with any great regularity; rather we also
find present and aorist imperatives and jussive subjunctives just as in the
Greek of earlier and later periods.
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University
Summer: 1647 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu OR cwconrad at ioa.com
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/
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