"Syntactical Chiasmus"

Steven Craig Miller stevencraigmiller at home.com
Tue Jan 30 08:42:58 EST 2001


To: Iver Larsen,

<< Positing a chiasm in Matt 7:6 does not violate Greek syntax. The third 
person plural forms are the least specific in terms of personal deixis, and 
they often function equivalent to a passive. (This is a claim of universal 
linguistics, called declining specificity in personal pronouns.) This means 
that one often has to rely in a significant way on the context and make 
some guesses as to what may be the intended referent of a third person verb 
form. >>

This appears to be more of a rationalization than an explanation. Why don't 
you give us concrete examples where two 3rd person plural verbs connected 
only with a KAI (and without any other subject indicators -- examples just 
like we have at verse 6cd), which refer to two different subjects? Unless 
you can come up with concrete examples to prove your case, your theorizing 
doesn't have any real merit.

Furthermore, if one has to guess (as you say), why guess the "a b b a" 
structure of a chiasmus? Why not guess the "a b a b" structure of 
parallelism? Or better yet, why not guess that the subject of verse 6c and 
the subject of verse 6d are the same subject? If it is all a matter of 
guess work, how do you justify that one guess is better than another?

Positing a chiasm in Matt 7:6 does indeed violate normal Greek syntax, 
since in normal Greek syntax two verbs joined only with a KAI and with no 
other indication of a change of subject, normally refer to the SAME 
subject. For you to assume that they refer to two different subjects is 
indeed a violation of normal Greek syntax.

-Steven Craig Miller
Alton, Illinois (USA)
stevencraigmiller at home.com




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