[B-Greek] Third-person commands
Chet A. Creider
creider at uwo.ca
Sat Nov 12 07:18:22 EST 2005
Hi Iver -- thank you so much for cc'ing your reply to me. I've never
been able to master these modern GUI (Graphical User Interface) browsers
and email programs and alway have great difficulty replying to a post
to B-Greek which doesn't come separately to me as an email.
Although there may be some methodological disagreements between us, I'm
not sure there are any disagreements of substance.
On Sat, 12 Nov 2005, Iver Larsen wrote:
> [CC:]
> The TW formative which gives the 3ps imperative its distinctive shape
> goes back to Proto-Indo-European and apparently had a future imperative
> sense and was used in all persons. It appears in Sanskrit and in Latin
> explicitly in what is termed the future imperative (a rarely used set of
> forms which appeared mostly in legal documents). From this I conclude
> that the imperative mood as it appears in the second person and in the
> third person is formally the same mood. It is therefore not a good idea
> to call the second person _form_ an imperative and the third person
> _form_ a jussive. (This is not say that the two forms dont have
> separate and different meanings see below.)
>
> IL: The purpose of using a different term for 3. person is to avoid the
> notion that a 3rd person imperative is as much a command as a 2nd person
> imperative is. I am not aware of any language that has a 3rd person
> imperative functioning in the same way as a 2nd person imperative. You know
> more languages than I do, so maybe you can think of one? You know Swahili,
> which has a 2nd person singular and plural imperative, functioning as a
> command (fungua mlango!). But in addition, there is a set of subjunctive
> forms in all persons, where the second person form is used as a polite
> command either in the positive, (e.g. ufungue or in the negative, e.g.
> usifungue). For Greek, I would have suggested subjunctive for the 3rd person,
> but that term is already in use for something different.
CC:
This is a methodological disagreement: If one is talking about (naming)
paradigms, which one must do _before_ talking about meaning or function,
then it is very wrong to use one label for one part of a single paradigm
and another label for another part. There is no evidence, historical
or synchronic (formal), that third person imperatives belong to a different
paradigm than 2nd person imperatives, and to use different labels is to
assume the truth of what you must demonstrate.
> CC:
> It is perfectly possible for a third person imperative to be a command.
> The meaning would be something like, I say to him/her/them to do X, or
> I say to him/her/them, do X.
>
> IL: I don't think this is a helpful description of the 3rd person imperative
> in Greek. Why do you suggest to add "I say to"? By doing so, it becomes
> unclear who the addressee is. If you say "I say to him", it sounds as if he
> is the addressee, but he is in fact not. He is the actor.
CC:
There is no fundamental disagreement here. I used this awkward expression
because I felt that you, and possibly others, were confusing the fact that
there was an audience Paul was speaking to with the fact that when a third
person imperative is used, the intended actor is an indirect addressee.
> There are an abundance of 3rd person imperatives in Greek, 15 in 1 Cor 7
> alone, and 43 in 1 Cor as a whole. (Most of them are singular). Looking at
> the usage and meaning, the prototypical sense of the 3rd person imperative
> seems to be obligation and is often best translated in English by "should" or
> "ought to".
CC:
This is an important and interesting claim. I don't at all object to it,
although I do think that it is prima facie not the hypothesis of choice.
(This doesn't make it false, and in fact makes it more interesting.) It
is not entirely clear to me how one might go about providing evidence
for the validity of the claim, but I do think that one thing one should
_not_ do is cite English translations. I think the best way is probably
to assume the counterclaim, viz. that there is no difference between 2nd
and 3rd person usage, and then show by an examination of the surrounding
Greek text and extratextual context that the third person imperatives are
intended to have a less strong rhetorical force. I think this will not
be easy with NT Greek, where 2nd person imperatives are often used in
contexts in which other languages would require something more 'toned down'.
(This suggests that the default meaning of both 2nd and 3rd person imperatives
is weaker than 'command'.)
IL:
> When I looked up the 15 3rd person imperatives in 1 Cor 7, the GNB only once
> uses "let" (in 7:15). For all the others, it uses 7 "should"s, 3 "must"s, 1
> "ought to" and one is buried in the idiom "never mind" (more literally: It
> should not bother you.) So, at least the GNB prototypically translated a 3rd
> ps imperative by "should".
>
CC:
I'm glad you've made this examination, and it gives your claim some likelihood,
but as I said previously, I don't think that the evidence of English translations
should be allowed. (We may have a slight disagreement here, but I suspect
that you don't disagree with me methodologically but would simply claim that
it is convenient to refer to the English translations.)
> CC:
> In third person forms it is important to distinguish the intended actor
> of the imperative verb from the addressee. Thus in 1 Cor 7:15, Paul is
> addressing the congregation, but in formal terms, the one who is
> intended as the actor of the imperative verb (CWRIZESQW) is the
> unbelieving one (hO APISTOS).
>
> IL: Yes, this is fine, but it seems simpler to me to express this by saying:
> I am telling you people that such a person ought to.... or in short: He
> should... One could make it stronger and say: He must.... , but I am not
> sure that the import of the Greek imperative is that strong. That may be a
> matter of context or presuppositions, and I noticed that GNB decided that in
> 3 cases the context called for a "must" (vs. 11,12 and 13.). NIV and NLT also
> use "must", but I think this may be theologically motivated. RSV, NET and NCV
> use "should" in the same places.
>
CC:
Again, I don't think there is any disagreement here. I was very deliberately
not using English translations and so it is not surprising that my expression
is more complicated. I would claim that it is less ambiguous, however.
> CC:
> Third, if it is to be answered in the affirmative, then there is a
> subsidiary question of hat the default or prototypical meaning is, e.g.
> command. I think that command is reasonable for the default sense, if
> there is a default sense, although there are other possibilities.
>
> IL: My point is that the prototypical sense of command is fine for the 2nd
> person, but not for the 3rd person. There the protocypical meaning is more
> like obligation.
CC:
As I said previously, this is a very interesting claim. To make it stick,
one would have to show that the default meaning of the 2nd person imperative
is not also obligation. The truth may be that both persons share the same
range of meanings but that the distribution (frequency) of the subtypes is
different for the two persons.
> CC:
> Fourth, still assuming the existence of prototypical meanings, is it
> possible that the second person imperative has a different default sense
> than the third person imperative? That is, is the third person
> imperative jussive in sense, but the second person imperative not? I
> dont know for sure, but I think that this is unlikely. We must not be
> misled by English translations here as English lacks third person
> imperatives.
>
> IL: This is where I disagree, and I don' think I am being misled by English
> translations, not being a native English speaker anyway. Which English
> translation are you referring to? I am looking at the actual occurrences of
> the 3rd person imperatives in the GNT, and rarely is the English word "let"
> an adequate translation of the intended, contextual meaning. The GNB
> exceptional usage of "let" in 1 Cor 7:15 is probably motivated by context.
CC:
I accept that your hypothesis may be correct. This is entirely a matter
of evidence in the Greek.
> CC:
> The point of the preceding is not to deny the existence of a range of
> possible meanings for imperative forms in Greek, but rather to suggest
> that a possible starting point for the analysis of a particular usage is
> the prototypical meaning and that it should be assumed unless contextual
> factor suggest otherwise.
>
> IL: Well, it makes a big difference whether we assume that the prototypical
> meaning of the 2nd and 3rd person is the same (based on formal and historical
> criteria) or whether they are different (based on semantic criteria.)
CC:
The assumption I make is intended only as an initial hypothesis, a reasonable
starting point. Yours, which you don't qualify as an assumption, but which
it is clear you do agree needs to be demonstrated, is a counterhypothesis,
a very interesting one.
Chet Creider
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