[B-Greek] SHMERON in LUke 23:43

Jeffrey B. Gibson jgibson000 at comcast.net
Tue May 18 11:14:12 EDT 2004



Kenneth Litwak wrote:

>     Yesterday I was asked about LUke 23:43, by parties
> on one side of an argument I wasn't involved in
> (mercifully).  Here's the question.  Given that there
> was no punctuation in first century Greek writing, is
> there any way to determine, on _purely_ grammatical
> grounds, whehter SHMERON goes with what precedes or
> follows it?  IN other words, does Lke record of Jesus
> as sayng
>
> 1.  Today I say to you, you will be with me in
> paradise [at some future point]
>
> or
>
> 2.  I say to you that on this very day you will be
> with me in paradise
>
> I would never have thoght of #1 being an option, but
> the people who asked me aobut it strongly support
> number #1.  I'm not aware of any rule, and I"m not
> ready to go read the TLG for occurrences of SHMERON.
> That could take years to analyze.  Thanks.

You've left out a third option -- that Luke has Jesus say,  Given that
it is TODAY,  the eschatological day,  ....

Having said that, there's nothing to my knowledge grammatically that
helps to decide the question one way or the other.  What we have to
resort to as evidence that will help us decide is Luke's usage of the
term in question.  It is usually used with an "eschatological sense"
isn't it?

You might also want to consider the fact that early commentators did
think what you say you would not think could be the case (see the data
gathered in Fitzmyer)

BTW,  and FWIW, SyrC **does** punctuate this verse -- and it places the
comma **after** "today", not before it. . In other words, it testifies
to the perception (common in Syriac Christianity?) that Jesus'
declaration was not one in which Jesus is saying that the "thief" was
going to be in paradise later on in the day in which he and Jesus were
crucified.

Yours,

Jeffrey
--

Jeffrey B. Gibson, D.Phil. (Oxon.)

1500 W. Pratt Blvd. #1
Chicago, IL 60626

jgibson000 at comcast.net





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