[B-Greek] On Jussives

Dr. Don Wilkins drdwilkins at sbcglobal.net
Fri Nov 11 23:59:40 EST 2005


For precision I basically mean the many more grammatical options that  
Greek has in comparison to Hebrew, with the exception of the voices  
(or what I call voices in Hebrew for the sake of convenience, as e.g.  
the niphal, hiphil, hithpael etc.). Then, with the fewer options in  
Hebrew, great flexibility in grammatical meaning is unavoidable (a  
bad thing for specifying meaning); for example, the relative absence  
of cases and the very limited forms in tense/aspect. As for mood,  
Hebrew has perhaps two, three, or none at all, depending on how you  
look at it in terms of form and excluding infinitives and  
participles. But I suspect you know all this better than I do. As to  
the LXX, identifying correspondences is sometimes problematic because  
of translation Greek. Sometimes the Greek is a formal equivalent, and  
at other times it is interpretive. For example, a Greek 3p imperative  
is mostly routine for the 3p jussive in Hebrew, but as we saw in the  
example I cited, a different Greek mood (e.g. optative) might be used  
for the jussive if the translators treat the latter as a wish.

Don Wilkins

On Nov 11, 2005, at 11:40 AM, Donald R. Vance, Ph.D. wrote:

> You speak of greater precision in the Greek. How so? With regard to
> the optative, has anyone done a study that elucidates the
> correspondences (if any) between the moods of Greek and Hebrew as
> reflected in the LXX? For example, is an optative in the LXX usually
> reflective of a jussive (or something else) in the Hebrew (when the
> LXX and MT have the same text)?
> 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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