future indicatives as imperatives

L. J. Swain larry.swain at wmich.edu
Mon Jan 15 20:46:03 EST 2001


Again, I think it depends on your target audience.  Since this in the Loeb, I think

your grad student has a point; after all while "do not" language is a little less
stilted in everyday use than "shall", for "do not" we usually say "don't".  So if
you're using the "do not" I would use the "shall" in response, and only footnote it

the first time you use it and leave it at that.  That's my .02

Larry Swain



Bart Ehrman wrote:

>     The Didache gives a lot of orders, a lot of them are negative, and a
> lot of them use the future indicative.  Some are quotations of the LXX.
> Thus:  OU FONEUSEIS, OU MOIXEUSEIS, OU PAIDOFQORHSEIS, OU PORNEUSEIS,
> etc. etc.
>
>    It also gives positive commands using the future inicative: AGAPHSEIS
> TON QEON TON POIHSANTA SE, e.g.
>
>     Moreover, it also uses regular imperative forms (esp. for positive
> commands).
>
>     My inclination is to translate these all as imperatives: e.g., for the
> negatives above, "Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not sodomize
> children, to not engage in sexual immorality."  And for the positive:
> "Love the God who made you."
>
>     But one of my grad students who's reading over all my drafts for me,
> and whose judgment i trust, is pushing me to go for the more conventional,
> "You shall not..." and "You shall..."  Her point is that this helps
> preserve the allusive character of the injunctions (i.e., it sounds more
> like BIble language); my point is that I never talk that way (I always
> say, "Shut the blasted door," never "You shall shut the blasted door"; or
> "Don't stay up too late," never "You shall not stay up too late") ((and
> also that the repetitions of the shalls and shall notes gets rather
> tiresome))
>
>    Does anyone else want to weigh in?
>
> -- Bart Ehrman
>    University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
>
> ---
> B-Greek home page: http://metalab.unc.edu/bgreek
> You are currently subscribed to b-greek as: [x99swain at wmich.edu]
> To unsubscribe, forward this message to $subst('Email.Unsub')
> To subscribe, send a message to subscribe-b-greek at franklin.oit.unc.edu




More information about the B-Greek mailing list