[B-Greek] RE: Subjunctive or Indicative question

Matthew Baldwin baldwin at apocryphum.com
Fri Apr 16 07:56:03 EDT 2004


Philip Brown reports:

>Bill Mounce uses the following question from Matt. 6:28 as an example of a
>deliberate subjunctive:
>KAI PERI ENDUMATOS TI MERIMNATE?

And that: 

> None of the Greek morphology databases I
>have parse it as subjunctive.

And asks:

>Is there something about the syntax/semantics of the question that argues
>for parsing it as subjunctive?

Someone else has probably already weighed in on this (I use the daily digest
so I am always behind) but I would point out a couple of things.

1) "Deliberative subjunctive" like all deliberative syntax usually requires
the participation of the speaker, i.e., Should I stay or should I go? Should
we go to the beach?  "To be, or not to be, that is the question."  Normally
it would employ first person verbs.  Deliberation implies choices between
options.

2) It theoretically can (but I think not very effectively) be used in second
person discourse: "should you go to the beach?"  Second person deliberative
speech is artificial, trying to induce deliberation in the listener;
examples include advertisements, e.g., "should you do something about those
smelly armpits?"  Either way such deliberations are rhetorical questions
that require the speaker to provide an answer in word or deed ("yes" or
"no").  

3) This rhetorical question issued by Matthew's Jesus may imply the
actuality of the worrying: "why are y'all worrying about clothing?" (i.e.
You do worry about clothing, but you should not.)

4)  Even if not, even if it is subjunctive, it cannot be translated "should
y'all be worrying about clothing?" a question implying a deliberation
between options (gee... Let's think about this together... On the one hand,
you need clothing, and it costs money, and money's hard to get; on the
other, God clothes flowers more richly than Solomon; gee, which reason is
more compelling???).  Rather, the question is "why should you worry?" which
presumes that the "hearer" may do so, and demands an apologia (i.e. The
questioner is saying, I have given you good reasons not to do so, now you
give me a good reason to do so).  The question rhetorically assumes any
apologia to be inadequate, because of the argument against such worry
presented elsewhere in the context of 6:25-29.   The choice is made already
by 6:25, and is defended in 6:28-29 both with question and declaration.
That is not deliberative subjunctive; rhetorically it is closer to
hortatory!

5) Pres. subjunctive and pres. indicative MERIMNATE may be morphologically
identical.  I see no compelling reason to see it as subjunctive rather than
indicative.  And I see no good syntactical reason to agree with Mounce that
this is "deliberative subjunctive" even if you do decide to parse and
translate this as subjunctive.

Matthew Baldwin
Assistant Professor
Religion and Philosophy
Mars Hill College
Mars Hill, NC










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