[B-Greek] Syntax of Mark 15:39 VR

Steven Lo Vullo slovullo at mac.com
Thu Apr 24 03:25:43 EDT 2003


On Wednesday, April 23, 2003, at 04:22 PM, Alan Hultberg wrote:

> Does the variant reading on Mark 15:39 found in D make sense (IDWN hO 
> KENTURIWN ... OTI hOUTWS AUTON KRAXANTA KAI EXEPNEUSEN EIPEN ...)? As 
> I see it, either AUTOS and its participle ought to be in the 
> nominative case and KAI dropped (as A and other witnesses -- "seeing 
> that he, crying out in this way, expired), or the hOTI ought to be 
> dropped and EKPVEUW be made an accusative participle ("seeing him 
> crying out in this way and expiring").  Can the accusative function 
> with hOTI and the participle be correlated with a finite verb?  I know 
> that it's not uncommon to encounter variant readings that don't make 
> sense, but am I missing something here?

Alan, I should have mentioned in my last post that it is particularly 
the position of AUTON KRAXANTA within the hOTI clause that makes this 
v.l. seem unlikely to me. I would be less skeptical if the hOTI clause 
**followed** the accusative pronoun-participle construction (though I 
think a present participle would be much more natural, since the 
participle in indirect discourse retains the tense of the direct 
discourse). In other words, if hOTI followed KAI, I think this might 
make sense. But even if this were the case, it seems hOUTWS would be 
hard to account for, since I think it would have to go with EXEPNEUSEN, 
for otherwise it is hard to see the significance of mentioning "that he 
breathed his last" as a reason for the centurion's confession. It seems 
that it was the **way** he breathed his last that so impressive him. I 
would reject this variant on several counts.
============

Steven R. Lo Vullo
Madison, WI



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