[B-Greek] Revelation 12:7

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Thu Apr 8 16:41:13 EDT 2004


At 10:18 PM +0200 4/8/04, Arie Dirkzwager wrote:
>Bart,
>
>In my opinion the apostle John wrote the Revelation. If you do not agree,
>the author must have been a Jew, who, like John, used to think in a
>Semitical language. There are many examples in the Revelation where the
>Greek language could be improved (Blass-Debrunner-Rehkopf, par. 136). I do
>not think that we have to classify these examples as mere mistakes. It is
>clear that John had from time to time some problems expressing his thoughts
>in a foreign language (like me now).
>
>So it is not clear if John *wrote* the Revelation in Hebrew or Aramaean.
>Anyhow, *in his mind* the Revelation was present in Hebrew or Aramaean.
>
>His style in the Gospel and the letters is better. But we should not forget,
>that John was very old when he wrote the Revelation. It is also possible
>that he did not have the time (the text had to be send to the seven churches
>in order to comfort them) or did not have the right person at hand to
>improve the language of the text he was writing.

I really think speculation on the authorship of Revelation is not really
appropriate to B-Greek discussion; there's no consensus on the matter. What
there IS some consensus on, however, is that this document is an
extraordinary repository of constructions that stand outside of standard
Greek grammar. BDF has a special section on these "solecisms" (§136).
-- 

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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