[B-Greek] 2 Thess 3:11, TINAS PERIPATOUNTAS
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Tue Oct 21 18:06:47 EDT 2003
At 4:16 PM -0400 10/21/03, bgreek at ntresources.com wrote:
>Carl observed:
>> Isn't this simply a clause of indirect discourse? With a verb
>> of perception, indirect discourse is commonly with subject
>> accusative and participle rather than with subject accusative
>> and infinitive...
>
>Hmmm. I'm beginning to wonder if this might not be a deficiency in koine
>grammars. I think that most of them, if they discuss indirect discourse at
>all, mention only the possibility that an infinitive may take the place of a
>finite verb in indirect discourse--rarely a mention of the ptcp. I've been
>doing some hunting around on this topic and here's what I've noted. There is
>a bit more than I remember, but not, I think, sufficient explanation.
>Perhaps that's because the ptcp. formulation is less common in the NT?
>(Anyone have any count/approximation as to the frequency of this
>construction?) I suspect that koine students would find this baffling--I was
>myself, having forgotten this one (which may say more about my memory than
>the construction! :)
I personally think that the synchronic focus of NT Greek studies tends to
blind teachers and students of NT Greek to the fact that the language of
the NT is in flux, that constructions such as the participial indirect
discourse with a verb of perception once standard in classical Koine are
considerably rarer in NT Koine but still used by those writers especially
(e.g. Luke, Paul) who probably had grammatical and literary instruction in
a school. First-year Koine grammars teach the constructions that are more
common and tend to ignore or give short shrift to those less common. It
wouldn't hurt at all for students of NT Koine to read considerably more
Greek outside of the Biblical corpus and outside of the NT era.
>First year grammars:
>Mounce only gives the infinitive option; no mention of the participle (p.
>308 in 2d ed.); same with Machen (p. 139) and Goetchius (p. 197)--I didn't
>check further.
>
>In intermediate grammars, I found a good discussion of this only in McKay's
>*New Syntax* (ch. 12; ptcp. discussed on 105-6--and he is primarily a
>classics scholar, though like Carl he has done a lot of good NT work). There
>are brief mentions of this (but usually not much discussion or explanation
>and rarely more than one example) in Porter's *Idioms* (p. 274), Wallace's
>*Grammar* (pp. 645b-646a), Burton's *Moods and Tenses* (p. 176); Young (p.
>149), and Dana & Mantey (p. 298).
>
>Robertson does discuss it at some length (1040-42).
>
>Smyth, by contrast, has an extensive discussion (pp. 470-72), though this
>work is neither a beginning nor intermediate level grammar.
Smyth is, of course, a grammar fundamentally of classical Attic, but that's
no reason for the NT student to ignore it. Robertson and BDF wrote with the
assumption that those referring to their work had a reasonable familiarity
with classical Attic; unfortunately this fact makes these very valuable
reference works far less useful to many current NT Greek students than they
could be.
--
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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