[B-Greek] Rev 2:25
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Wed Jan 14 07:38:18 EST 2004
At 6:58 PM -0800 1/13/04, mrt wrote:
>NEFOS not vefos
>
>Another correction re. Rev 2:25 1/13/04: NOT the Hebrew lex. BDB but BDF
>grammar
>
>For instances other than Conditional sentences where we do see an Indicative
>following AN are Gen 6:4; 30:42; Act 2:45, 4:35; 1 Cor 12:2. I suppose
>there are more. And I think **BDB §367** also gives more examples and
>speaks about this (cf. also BDAG I.a. AN)
I think I would have guessed that you meant BDF (as I was sure that you
also meant Nu with V). I think the BDF citation deserves another quibble:
the instances cited in BDF §367 are all iterative imperfect and aorists
with AN; one gets the sense that AN (Homeric KE) had a semantic value
something akin to "ever" or "if ever." I think however that the AN in Rev
2:25 is different:
PLHN hO ECETE KRATHSATE ACRIS hOU AN hHXW
If hHXW here is indicative future it would be more anomalous than those
instances of AN with indicative imperfect and aorist. Of course one
wouldn't be very hesitant to suspect the author of Revelation to employ an
anomalous construction! In fact, he who wrote hO WN KAI hO HN KAI hO
ERCOMENOS might very well write hHXW and mean it to be a future
subjunctive--but I'd sooner think it's an aorist subjunctive.
There's been occasional mention in the past of the older theory that the
future indicative derived from the short-vowel subjunctive of the sigmatic
aorist, but the current operating hypothesis is that the future forms
originated in use of -S- as a desiderative infix. Of course that's
intelligent guesswork rather than demonstrable fact.
--
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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