[B-Greek] Mark 16:15 -- participles and imperatives

Chet Creider creider at uwo.ca
Tue Dec 28 08:57:17 EST 2004


Eric has presented enough detail from Wallace for us to see that a fairly 
compelling case can be made for the correctness of his (Eric's) analysis of 
the participle in Mark 16:15 as a participle of Attendant Circumstance":

POREUQENTES EIS TON KOSMON hAPANTA KHRUXATE TO EUAGGELION PASHi THi KTISEI

However, a closer look may prove of interest.  I apologize in advance for 
the length of it.  The categories of our grammars have a history, and it is 
interesting to trace that of the participle of Attendant Circumstance.  The 
term first appears in English, as far as I know, in Hadley and Allen where 
it is not a named subtype of the circumstantial participle but rather a 
wastebasket category into which examples which fail to fall under one of 
the named subtypes go: "Most commonly, the circumstantial particple denotes 
merely an attendant circumstance.  But it may also imply means, manner, 
cause, purpose, condition, or concession.  Thus:

         a. MEANS OR MANNER ... (and the list begins)

Goodwin, in both his Greek Grammar and his Syntax of the Moods and Tenses 
of the Greek Verb, elevates "attendant circumstance" to his extended list 
of subtypes of the
the circumstantial participle although he doesn't capitalize the words.  An 
example he gives is ERXETAI TON hUION EXOUSA "she comes bringing her son".

In the NT grammatical world, Dana and Mantey, who use the term Adverbial 
Participle for the term which Goodwin introduced (Circumstantial 
Participle), rename the participle of attendant circumstance the 
Circumstantial Participle (!) but even retain some of Hadley and Allen's 
wording: "A participle ...may merely express an attendant 
circumstance..."  Their example is the one which Eric gave from Wallace: 
EKEINOI DE EXELQONTES EKHRUXAN PANTACOU (Mark 16:16).  (This is probably 
not a very good example of the category since there are clearly two 
separate actions and one is necessarily temporally  prior to the other -- 
cf. Carl's discussion on this topic.)

Finally, it appears from Eric's quotation that Wallace has has capitalized 
Attendant Circumstance as well as provided a list of diagnostic criteria 
and a suggested translation.

It is not clear to me that any of this classificatory work is a clear 
improvement on Hadley and Allen for the criteria by which various subtypes 
of circumstantial participles are defined are for the most part semantic, 
not grammatical, and have to do more with expression in English rather than 
with any clear polysemy in the Greek construction.  To be sure Wallace's 
criteria are an exception as they are all grammatical, but they are such a 
grabbag of items that it is difficult to have much confidence that a 
genuine subdivision in Greek grammar is being identified.

Turning to Mark 16:15, however, I think the real issue here is that the 
conventional translations with "and" are misleading as they make the 
English reader believe that the Greek has two imperatives (e.g., "Go ye 
into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature" (AV), "Go into 
all the world and preach the good news to all creation" (NIV), when in fact 
it has only one.  (One of the those who replied to James J's original post, 
which lacked the Greek, in fact seemed to assume that the Greek had two 
imperatives.)  It seems to me that our efforts to understand the Greek 
should focus on what is being done by the expression of the clause with the 
motion verb in subordinate fashion, as a participle.  It may be that it is 
an indirect imperative -- rather than telling someone, "Close the window!", 
one can say "I wish someone would close the window."  Or it may be that the 
participial expression allows it to be presupposed.  I don't know the 
answer here, but I do feel that this is what we should be thinking about 
rather than how to classify and how to translate the participial 
clause.  That is, why is it a participle in the first place -- what extra 
subtlety of expression is accomplished that is lacking when two imperatives 
are conjoined?  Perhaps it is only to blunt the relative heaviness of two 
direct orders, but whatever it is, that is what our efforts to understand 
the Greek should be directed to.

Chet Creider




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