[B-Greek] MARIAM in Luke 1:46
Iver Larsen
iver_larsen at sil.org
Sat Dec 27 01:34:01 EST 2003
> Williams Smith wrote:
> >
> > In Luke 1:46, the name MARIAM is undeclinable. Is
> > there any grammatical reason why it could not be
> > translated as a dative (and she said to Mary)
> > instead of a nominative (and Mary said)?
>
> This is not an answer. This is a related question,
> for those of you who know Greek better than I do.
>
> I'm going to guess that, when using an undeclined name,
> one interpretation often "stands out" over the others.
> For example, in the text named above, "Mary said"
> seems a better first guess than "She said to Mary".
> (That's just my take on it --
> if you disagree, then my point is lost.)
> If the author intends to say something other than
> the "interpretation that stands out", he would do
> well to indicate it somehow, e.g. using an article:
> EIPE hH MARIAM "Mary said" or
> EIPE TH MARIAM "She said to Mary".
Ted, you are quite right, and the principle applies generally, not only with
undeclined names. This is common sense, and more technically known as
Grice's co-operation maxim. It has been developed by Relevance Theory, and
the idea basically is that the interpretation that requires the least mental
processing is most likely the correct one. The speaker tries to make his
speech optimally relevant to the hearer, so if he intended the
interpretation of Mary being spoken to, he would have to make that clear in
one way or another.
The context (including the content of the speech, esp. v. 48) makes it clear
that Mary is the speaker. In addition, if someone had been speaking to Mary,
probably PROS MARIAM would have been used and the speaker would have been
identified, compare Luke 1:34 and 2:34.
Iver Larsen
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