[B-Greek] RE: Recognizing Subjectives
R Yochanan Bitan Buth
ybitan at mscc.huji.ac.il
Tue May 10 07:14:11 EDT 2005
>I am translating 1 John 1:9 and have two quick questions. First of
all, I am having trouble simply recognizing Subjunctive moods. What
clues should I see that will immediately tell me that I am dealing
with a word in a Subjunctive mood? Are certain words always
Subjunctive? I know that this is a mood of contingency or probability
but am simply having trouble correctly spotting them as I translate.
>The second question deals with this verse itself. It seems as if
John is using a present tense OMOLOGWMEN to indicate that our
confession of sins is to be a continual process, thus the present
tense and that the APHE and KATHARISE are both subjunctive, meaning
that these two are given to us and are contingent upon the continual
process of confessing.
It makes sense but I want to make sure that I am understanding John's
thought process for why he is using the Subjunctive mood here.
>So, to recap, my two main questions are:
1) How to recognize Subjunctives in a verse?
2) When translating, how to properly understand why it was used?
>Any help in understanding this mood would be appreciated.
<
Shalom Yoshua,
1. 1 John is a good place to practice reading and recognizing
indicative vs. subjunctive because of the repeated clauses with EAN
and INA. If you see either of those words, the following verb will be
subjunctive. You will be able to reinforce your morphology recognition
by simply remembering that. (Once in a few thousand some Greek will
use a future with INA, but leave that for your future.)
2. I will answer what I think your question is driving at.
[[Personally, I do not advocate translation as part of a language
learning process. It is much more complicated than people imagine and
to do a good job you will become tangled up in English stylistics, not
Greek learning. Plus you can probably read five -- ten times more
Greek for every sentence you try to write out in English.]]
The EAN clause OMOLOGWMEN (with continual/open-ended aspect= called
'PARATATIKH' in Greek) is open-ended and can apply 'whenever' and can
also refer to something repeated. The words AFH and KAQARISH refer to
specific instances.
Remember that language is meant to be used fluently, and Greeks didn't
have the luxury of discussing this in Enlgish. Also, they could
lexicalize (put into words) important ideas. E.g., the author could
have lexicalized MENEIN 'remaining, continuing' if he wanted to make a
point of it, like he does in many places of this letter.
So now, what do you think the author was trying to say? (You are
probably right.)
ERRWSO 'be well'
Randal Buth
Randall Buth, PhD
Director, Biblical Language Center
www.biblicalulpan.org
and Director, Biblical Studies in Israel
Hebrew University, Rothberg International School
ybitan at mscc.huji.ac.il
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