[B-Greek] On Jussives (oops)

Donald R. Vance, Ph.D. donaldrvance at mac.com
Fri Nov 11 12:00:58 EST 2005


I left off my signature the first time. Sorry.

In Iver Larsen's response to Don, he stated

<snip>

> To view the 3. ps. "imperative" (which is better called jussive) as  
> either a permission or a command would be
>
>
<snip>

I don't know the origin of the jussive in Greek, but in Semitics this  
term refers to an entire paradigm. The volitives  have three forms,  
the cohortative, the imperative, and the jussive. The cohortative  
(marked by the suffix -â) and the jussive (marked by a shortened  
form, if possible) were originally productive for all persons and  
formed two separate paradigms alongside the indicative. Only the  
imperative was restricted to the second person. As Hebrew developed,  
the cohortative tended to be restricted to first person, the  
imperative was already restricted to second person, but the jussive  
shows up in both second and third persons with regularity (I'm not  
sure about the first person off the top of my head). The difference  
in nuance between the three volitives is no longer clear. Is this  
situation analogous to that in the development of Greek?

Donald R. Vance, Ph.D.
Professor of Biblical Languages and Literature
Oral Roberts University
dvance at oru.edu
donaldrvance at mac.com





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