[B-Greek] Eusebius Revisited
Stephen C. Carlson
scarlson at mindspring.com
Mon Sep 22 22:18:53 EDT 2003
At 05:36 PM 9/21/03 -0700, Peter Kirby wrote:
>On Wednesday 17 September 2003 11:30 pm, Stephen C. Carlson wrote:
>> At 09:23 PM 9/17/03 -0700, Peter Kirby wrote:
>> >A while back I posed a question about Historia Ecclesiastica, Book 1,
>> > Chapter 11, Section 7. The TLG CD-ROM offers this Greek text:
>> >
>> >TAU=TA PERI\ TOU= *)IWA/NNOU DIELQW\N, KAI\ TOU= SWTH=ROS H(MW=N KATA\
>> > TH\N AU)TH\N TOU= SUGGRA/MMATOS I(STORI/AN W(=DE/ PWS ME/MNHTAI:
>> >
>> >There was a brief discussion about whether Eusebius implies that the Jesus
>> >passage came after the John passage, as "an aorist participle usually
>> > refers to action antecedent to that of the main verb."
>>
>> I would say that the aorist participle here is past from the point of
>> view of the present. Although the main verb is perfect in form, its
>> sense is really present (see the LSJ entry s.v. MIMNHSKW), and it is
>> certainly the present effect of the testimonium on the reader that is
>> being emphasized.
>
>Stephen, thank you for this contribution. Combined with Carl W. Conrad's
>earlier suggestion that the last phrase means "more or less as follows," this
>would raise the probability that Eusebius had recast the Testimonium.
I must not have been clear, because I don't see any reason to infer
the sequence of Eusebius's source from his sequence of quotations.
First, it is not clear to that the sequence of tenses in Eusebius
would even implies that, because MEMNHTAI though perfect in form
has a present meaning (as you translated, "he makes mention") so that
the sequence implied is merely the sequence as quoted in Eusebius.
Furthermore, the proposed interpretation extracts greater precision
in citation from Eusebius than he usually manages to accomplish, so
I would expect Eusebius's departures from his citation practice to
be more clearly signaled than by a sequence of tenses to be convincing.
Stephen Carlson
--
Stephen C. Carlson mailto:scarlson at mindspring.com
Synoptic Problem Home Page http://www.mindspring.com/~scarlson/synopt/
"Poetry speaks of aspirations, and songs chant the words." Shujing 2.35
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