[B-Greek] Gal 5:16 OU MH TELESHTE, 5:17 hINA MH hA EAN QELHTE TAUTA POIHTE

Clwinbery at aol.com Clwinbery at aol.com
Wed Mar 17 17:10:02 EST 2004


In a message dated 3/17/2004 11:59:34 AM Eastern Standard Time, iver_larsen at sil.org writes:

> 
> The imperative interpretation after OU MH is rather curious.
> 
> Having looked at the 94 instances of OU MH in the NT, I could not find a
> single one of them which would have the sense of an imperative.
> 
> So, I agree with you. The OU MW means "certainly not" or "never", a strong
> emphasis on something that is not going to happen.
> 
> If it was MH alone before an aorist subjunctive, that would be different,
> since that is a fairly common prohibition. I cannot really tell whether the
> distinction that Ann has mentioned for Classical Greek holds up in the NT.
> It doesn't look like it, since it occurs frequently in what I would
> understand to be a general prohibition (e.g. Mat 10:19 MH 
> FONEUSHiS, MH
> MOICEUSHiS, MH KLEYHiS, KTL)
> 
> Iver Larsen
I agree with Iver about both the emphatic negation OU MH + aorist and simple prohibition MH + aorist. The prohibition could be rendered "don't ever do X" The emphatic negation in the GNT most often would be rendered "you will never do X" Matt. 5:20).

Carlton Winbery 
Louisiana College



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