[B-Greek] Optatives?

craig newsgroupstuff at swiftdsl.com.au
Fri Jul 2 07:56:02 EDT 2004


> At 5:28 PM +1000 7/2/04, <newsgroupstuff at swiftdsl.com.au> wrote:
> >I only have a basic Greek text (Wenham), which doesn't say 
> much about 
> >optatives. Can someone explain the basic difference between optative 
> >and subjunctive moods?
> 
> BASIC difference? This really depends upon which era of Greek 
> linguistic development one is speaking of. In CLASSICAL ATTIC 
> (and in the revived literary language of the late first, and 
> later centuries of the Christian era), the optative has two 
> or three fundamental functions: to express wishes, to 
> indicate possibilities and contingencies more remote than 
> those indicated by subjunctives (particularly in conditional 
> or implicitly conditional constructions), and to mark the 
> verb in a subordinate clause dependent upon a primary clause 
> whose verb is in a past tense. In the non-literary Koine it 
> is more obsolete than obsolescent; in the GNT there are 68 
> instances all told, and of these, by far the greatest number 
> are found in Luke's gospel and Acts--and in Paul. But the 
> Pauline usages (30x) are limited to wishes and to the rather 
> idiomatic expression MH GENOITO
> (14x) which conveys something of the force of the American 
> English idiom, "No way!" In general, I think I perusal of 
> those 68 instances in the GNT will reveal that the great 
> majority of them are expressions of wishes ("May x happen/not 
> happen!").
> -- 
> 
> 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/

Mainly I have been reading Basil lately, and he seems to use optatives
frequently. I guess I am trying to understand the general difference in that
both optatives and subjunctives seem to generally deal with 'uncertainties'.
>From what you have said, and the little I have read, it seems to be that the
'uncertainty' is 'more remote' in the case of optative. But I'm not exactly
sure what it means by 'more remote'? 

Where there is an overlap of usage, what is the reason for choosing between
subjunctive and optative? I detect some fine distinctions in the entries in
Jeffrey A. Rydberg-Cox, Overview of Greek Syntax from the perseus site, but
wondering if there is some general 'rule of thumb' that explains these
distinctions and helps understand them, or if they just need to be learnt?

It seems that only optative is used when there is an expression of wishes..
Is that true? Otherwise what else is used instead?

Hope these questions make sense! Thanks for the help!

Craig Johnson
Brisbane, Australia 




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