[B-Greek] Marcan ambiguity: Mk 5:10

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Sat Mar 15 08:28:03 EST 2003


Hitherto my favorite example of Marcan non-specific (to describe it
neutrally) phrasing has been 2:3, literally, "And they come bringing him a
paralytic borne by four"; Grk KAI ERCONTAI FERONTES PROS AUTON PARALUTIKON
AIROMENON hUPO TESSARWN. Neither the bringers nor the paralytic is named
and we can't help wondering whether the bringers are identical with the
four that are bearing the paralytic. I suppose this could be tidied up by
translating it as "And a paralytic is brought to him in a litter borne by
four men." It's not really enough of a problem to make the reader slow down
and take pause.

Nor, at first sight, is the following pair of verses from the story of the
Gerasene demoniac as told by Mark:

Mk 5:9-10 KAI EPHRWTA AUTON: 'TI ONOMA SOI? KAI LEGEI AUTWi: 'LEGIWN ONOMA
MOI, hOTI POLLOI ESMEN. KAI PAREKALEI AUTON POLLA hINA MH AUTA APOSTEILHi
EXW THS CWRAS.

A translator will take this in stride, without thinking much about
ambivalent or wanting pronouns: "9 And he asked him, 'What's your name?'
And he tells him, "My name is Legion, since we are several.' 10 And he
urged him several times not to send them outside of the area." The opening
clause presents no problems: we know that it's Jesus speaking to the
demoniac, and so also with the next LEGEI AUTWi: the demoniac addresses
Jesus. We may find the switch from first-person singular MOI to the
first-plural verb and plural predicate adjective striking in LEGIWN ONOMA
MOI, hOTI POLLOI ESMEN--but we aren't likely to hesitate very long if at
all over it: either that's what the demoniac actually spoke or else Mark
has phrased the demoniac's answer in a way that gives clever expression to
the alienation of his selfhood. But verse 10 is a bit more of a challenge.
What's the subject of PAREKALEI? Is POLLA so simply an adverbial accusative
meaning "a lot"? Is AUTA no more than the accusative direct object of
APOSTEILHi, or could it point back to the subject of PAREKALEI? And
finally, what does CWRA in the final prepositional phrase refer to? Is it
simply the locale, the scene where this episode takes place?

The Greek sentence is so ambiguous that one must wonder whether the
ambiguity is a matter of that imprecise expression which we readily
(perhaps wrongly?) attribute to Marcan Greek or of deliberate imprecision
(an intriguing possibility that has grown far more plausible to me in
recent years)? It  could be construed in several different ways, although
some are less probable than others:

(1) It could be read as, "He kept begging many times" (third-singular verb,
POLLA understood as an adverbial accusative),

(2) or as, "They kept begging him many times not to send them out of the
territory" (since a neuter-plural subject may take a singular verb and
since the neuter plural AUTA is the object of the verb in the subordinate
clause, we may legitimately understand it also as the subject of the main
verb PAREKALEI,

(3) or we could even read the POLLA as a nominative substantive and subject
of PAREKALEI, which would yield, "And many (of the demons) kept begging him
not to send them outside of the territory."

(4) Moreover the phrasing of "send him out of the territory" is somewhat
strange; what territory is meant? the countryside outside of Gerasa? Gerasa
itself? The Decapolis? Or could the CWRA, the "territory" be the person of
the demoniac himself, the "area" occupied by the host of demons?

I ask these questions, of course(!),(a) because I've reached chapter 5 of
Mark in my little commentary on Mark and because one of my central concerns
is the HOW of Mark's storytelling, which makes me read and think more about
the way sentences are worded in a way that I wouldn't otherwise, and (b)
because I've always been fascinated by what seems to me curious parallel
features between this Marcan story of the Gerasene demoniac and Paul's
rhetorical accounting (Rom 7) of the demonic seizure of the self by Sin and
Death described as a "regime" (NOMOS) that wars against the self and takes
it captive (AICMALWTHS). Both accounts, it seems to me, are powerful
studies in the nature of "alienation." Nobody would raise an eyebrow at the
suggestion that Paul employs rhetoric in his account in Rom 7, but many
might all too readily accuse the evangelist Mark of straightforward
narration--with no attention at all paid by the narrator to subtlety in the
telling--of the facts of an event, "wie es eigentlich geschehen ist."

As I already noted above, some of the alternative readings of verse 10 are
less probable than others, but I don't think any of them is wholly
implausible. Nor do I think that this evangelist was so lacking in command
of his Greek that he couldn't say what he meant to say when he wrote.
-- 

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/


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