Great Commission question

Mark Wilson emory2oo2 at hotmail.com
Mon Feb 26 23:28:02 EST 2001


Jeff:

You wrote:

>     Matthew 28:19 says POREUQENTES OUN MAQHTEUSATE PANTA TA EQNH...
>     I usually see this as "Therefore, go and make disciples of all 
>nations..."  My
>question's about how to understand POREUQENTES; specifically, is it 
>accurate to render
>this (adverbial) participle as an imperative?  What are other valid 
>options?  Is there
>a consensus on which option is most likely meant?
>     Are adverbial participles that modify imperatives generally to be 
>understood as
>imperatives as well?


I gave this quote in an earlier post regarding verb-modifying participles. 
It is taken from Dr. Porter (Verbal Aspect):

"In some instances it may simply be better not to specify the relations
between the participle and the other elements of the construction,
since the context does not give specific indicators." [p. 191]


I wonder how many times we try to make sense of a passage by "imposing" 
English grammar on a Greek text. I think we are less comfortable than the 
Greeks when a sentence is left unpacked. I know Dr. Wallace likens 
translating to "unpacking" a Greek construct, but he really does not give 
clear guidelines as to when to stop unpacking :o )

(In fact, one criticism against him is his seemingly unabated efforts to 
invent more and more categories. For example, he suggests over 30 categories 
for the Genitive alone, including a Plenary Genitive!)

Perhaps a good rule of thumb would be to let participles just kind of 
dangle. It makes for poor English, but I kind of like them when reading 
Greek.

"having gone, make disciples..."
"after you've gone, make disciples..."

My thoughts,

Mark Wilson

_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com




More information about the B-Greek mailing list