[B-Greek] Re: 1 Cor. 14:8 - word order, BDF & Turner
R Yochanan Bitan Buth
ybitan at mscc.huji.ac.il
Tue May 31 03:59:13 EDT 2005
Shalom Chet,
You, too, cover so much interesting ground that it is difficult to
write a single response. I will put comments below with [**]
> So, Randall, I think there is ample justification for you to have
written that three elements were fronted if by that you meant fronted
from a hypothetical neutral verb-subject-object order, >
** Thank you. For me, the neutral order comes from de-pramaticizing a
'deep structure', not from a statistical count. I cited Dik because
she worked on Herodotus, an ancient author that Rife might have called
"Subject-Object-Verb" yet she analyzed as "Verb-Subject-Object". It
all boils down to identifying the pragmatic movements being
involved.**
>but at the same
time, I think it is probably not wise to put too much reliance on
such an order since it is probably an artifact of the influence of
LXX on the Greek of the authors of the NT, specifically, that the
order
signals "religious, formal" style.>
**Yes and no. As mentioned above, even the complex, highly flexible
orders of good classical Greek prose can be analyzed as being
generated out of a "Verb-Subject-Object" core, from inside the brain
as it were, before it gets expressed and ordered in its final output
as either speech or writing. On the other hand, that flexibility would
be assumed to be altered partially by either multilingualism or use of
translation from Semitic sources. Even so, I find the NT to be Greek
in its word order, not Septuagintal.**
>Turner makes the interesting point that Aramaic has neutral order
subject-
object-verb. Does anyone know if this was true of all Aramaic and in
particular Palestinian Aramaic. >
** Turner was not an Aramaist, and most of the Aramaists of last
century were not general linguists (e.g. one influential grammar
suggested that Aramaic was Object-Verb-Subject without discussion,
something so radical among the world's languages as to be considered
almost impossible at best, or mis-analyzed at worst. In any case,
Aramaic was certainly not O-V-S!) Having written a dissertation on
Aramaic word order I may be in a position to give some answers to your
question.
Aramaic in the First Temple period (pre-Ezekiel) was strongly
Verb-Subject-Object. Foregrounded clauses tended toward
Verb-Subject-Object, with restricted frontings, something akin to what
we see in Hebrew of that time period. During the Late Babylonian and
Persian period Aramaic became very flexible, probably with influence
from Subject-Object-Verb uses of Akkadian and Persian, incidently
generating new conjunctions for sequentiality like EDAYIN "then" (also
QARAVTA, AHAR in non-Jewish writings). However, this flexible word
order was still best analyzed as based on "Verb-Subject-Object" plus
pragmatic positionings. In Late Second Temple Aramaic, like that found
at Qumran, we find both the flexible Verb-Subject-Object type of
Aramaic (e.g. col 2 of Genesis Apocryphon) as well as a tighter, more
restricted Verb-Subject-Object order (e.g. col 19-22 of Genesis
aocryphon). Later Jewish Aramaic seems to preserve the
Verb-Subject-Object substratum that must have remained in the spoken
language throughout the Persian/Second Temple period of
highly-flexible order.**
> If so, one wonders why there is so little
syntactic evidence for this in the NT. >
** Firstly, most of the NT was written directly in Greek by persons
who were quite competent in Greek. It is in the gospels and perhaps
Acts that one may suspect the use of sources that trace back to
Semitic originals. Especially in the gospels one finds ample evidence
of non-Greek patterns mixed into Greek patterns. However, something
not usually noted by Semitists who write on the gospels, Aramaic
should almost certainly be ruled out as the primary influencing
Semitic language. Aramaic narrative of the period generated
conjunctions that show up in Greek as TOTE 'then'. Check Daniel, Ezra
for canonical examples, plus 1 Esdras in the middle section. Matthew's
idiosyncratic Greek style also shows an Aramaic influence of this
conjunction in the first century. Mark used TOTE, but never once as a
narrative conjunction. Thus, his Semitized Greek style is distinctly
and absolutely Hebraic. Likewise, for Luke, whose 2 "narrative TOTE"
would fit any language profile, including Greek. (Nevertheless, Luke
is influenced from Semitic sources, which then again points to
Hebrew.) [[If someone adds, 'OK, written sources behind the gospels
were probably Hebrew as opposed to Aramaic, but what about parables
and oral teaching?' All Jewish story parables in rabbinic literature
(thousands) were in Hebrew, despite the fact that the literature
itself was both Hebrew and Aramaic. 99+% of all tannaitic teaching
(early Jewish teaching, including many from the Galilee) was passed on
in Hebrew, where the principle in rabbinic literature was 'preserve
the teacher's words in the language given'. Back to the Greek gospels:
when it comes to translated sources, it is very rare that one can
distinguish an Aramaic saying from a Hebrew saying after being
translated into Greek. As a caveat, many examples of 'Aramaisms' in NT
commentaries simply show a lack of the commentator's acquaintance with
current studies of Mishnaic Hebrew, especially the Israeli school.]]
**
> Were the targums not as widely
read as the LXX or the Hebrew OT text?>
** Another assumption of much NT scholarship that turns out to be
somewhere between 'groundless' to 'misleading'. Notice that at Qumran
and Judean wilderness, where adherents apparently donated or brought a
wide range of literature, there were copies of every Hebrew book of
the bible except Ester, most with multi-copies. There were fragments
from copies of many books of the LXX or old Greek bible. There were
quite a few non-biblical literary pieces in Hebrew and Aramaic,
non-lliterary pieces in all three, Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. But the
Aramaic targum of the Bible was virtually non-existant. There were two
copies of Job, a notoriously difficult book and dialect (the LXX
mentions using an Aramaic source in its translation, too). Also found
was an Aramaic fragment from Leviticus 16, which may or may not have
been from a translation of the book, or part of another work.
Apparently, Jews in the Land were not using an Aramaic targum in the
first century. That lines up with what we know about Jewish religious
teaching among the tannaim and the development of the targumic use in
the synagogue around the time right after Bar-Kochba, post 135 CE. If
a targum existed in the first century, it probably existed and was
used east from Damascus. The longer Job targum, one of the two
mentioned above, has scribal characteristics of having come from the
east. For citation of such recent views, I have a short article on
"Aramaic Targumim at Qumran" in the IVP Dictionary of NT Backgrounds,
2000.**
>Greek word order at any period in the history of the language is
difficult to understand!
Chet Creider>
** Yes, though I prefer to see it as an 'engaging read'. Greek word
order forces a reader to stay alert for salient items toward the
beginning of a clause (yes, pre-verb) as well as non-salient items
pre-verb. This is even true of the poetry, metrically conditioned
though it was. **
ERRWSQE
Randall 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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