[B-Greek] Third-person commands

Dr. Don Wilkins drdwilkins at sbcglobal.net
Sat Nov 12 20:00:57 EST 2005


My apologies for butting in here.

On Nov 12, 2005, at 12:53 AM, Iver Larsen wrote:

> ...
> 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.

Perhaps you are thinking too much of a Greek 3p imperative as a Latin  
3p jussive subjunctive. The Greek is a different animal.
>
> 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.

Aha. The addressee seems to be the main point of confusion. When I  
used "addressed," I was speaking of the actor from your perspective.  
By the very nature of the situation, the third person is not being  
addressed directly, but the fallacy of turning the 3p command into a  
rhetorical 2p is to imagine that because the third person is not the  
direct audience, the 2p listeners become the actor in the third  
person's absence, instead of the messenger. The sense of the 3p  
command is more like telling someone, "Johnny is to wash the dishes;  
you dry them."

> 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".

Note "seems to be." This is an interpretation of the Greek via what  
appears to be a reasonable (but actually non-equivalent) English term.
>
> 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".
>
But the context of this decision is the whole point. Translators are  
simply trying to avoid "let" because of the average reader's  
misunderstanding of the construction. "Must" is the best of the lot  
that you mentioned, though by no means ideal. "Should" and "ought"  
can be disastrous because they are actually suggestions. It's a good  
thing the ten commandments are second person, otherwise we might have  
something like "One should not commit adultery". What if the vehicle  
code read, "One ought to stay at or below the speed limit"?
> ...
> 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.
>
Again, I think this is a case of interpreting the Greek from an  
English perspective. If the situation were reversed, I'm sure we  
would be amused by the mistakes of a Greek trying to interpret  
English grammar and idioms purely from a Greek viewpoint.

Don Wilkins



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