[B-Greek] Imperatives side by side

Eric Inman eric.inman at wescorpflex.com
Tue Mar 1 22:20:53 EST 2005


Thanks for your help. I couldn't remember if I had heard or read that
thought somewhere or just made it up. Your off-the-cuff guess seems makes
sense.

-----Original Message-----
From: Carl W. Conrad [mailto:cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu]
Sent: Tuesday, March 01, 2005 6:26 PM
To: Eric Inman
Cc: B Greek
Subject: RE: [B-Greek] Imperatives side by side


At 4:22 PM -0600 3/1/05, Eric Inman wrote:
>To all,
>
>This brings up a question I've had. Is there a preference or rule in
>"proper" Greek to have just one finite verb in a sentence?

This unfortunately begs a huge question: what constitutes a sentence to the
Greek speaker/writer? Ephesians 1:3-14 offers a meaningful test of the
dimensions of that question: it could be argued that this whole sequence of
twelve verses constitutes a single sentence, or a single Greek PERIODOS,
but most English translations reformulate it as at least three sentences.

Inasmuch as one may also have difficulty definining what is "proper," I
don't think that the question as raised admits of any one simple answer.
Those who have had an education in Greek schools involving standard
rhetorical skills are likely to write longer and more complex sentences and
rely upon participles and relative clauses to support considerable
subordination. A good exercise for those interested in this question might
be to outline ten-verse sequences in (a) the gospel of John, (b) the gospel
of Luke, (c) an authentic Pauline letter, (d) the letter to the Hebrews.

My own off-the-cuff guess would be that NT authors (or secular Greek
authors, for that matter) who have established their own distinctive style
will not conform to a single easily-described pattern, but that most of
them will have come to rely upon the adjectival and adverbial participles
as the work-horse means of verbal expression in Greek.
--

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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