[B-Greek] Third-person commands
Glenden Riddle
glendenpriddle at yahoo.com
Sat Nov 12 22:57:52 EST 2005
There are at least two major flaws in the discussion of the Greek imperatives:
1) Trying to analyze the Greek as if it fit English categories and ending up with non-imperative examples. For example:
> 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.
G.R. In this example the main verb is indicative "I say" and the content of the speech in neither case is THIRD PERSON IMPERATIVE, but is either (1) infinitive "to do X" using indirect discourse or (2) SECOND PERSON IMPERATIVE "you do X" using direct discourse.
EX: Every time my wife watches one of those soap operas I say "Turn that silly stuff off."
2) Failing to recognize the pragmatics of language. I think this is the number one problem and one that definitely affects our ability to understand N.T. Greek (or any other language for that matter). Let's take this on a word, phrase, and sentence level:
#1) The Greek TAPEINOPHROSUNE means "humility" but in Col 2:23 is translated "false humility" (NIV) or "self-abasement" (NASB). In the context Paul is obviously using sarcasm which gives the negative connotation.
#2) At the end of Jn 9:39 Jesus says that he came so that "HOI BLEPONTES TUPHLOI GENWTAI" and we have to understand this phrase something other than Jesus came into this world so that people who can see o.k. will need to learn Braille. The pragmatic use of language forces us to understand the phrase differently.
#3) When Jesus says "Hate your father and mother" we know that he was not commanding hatred toward one's parents.
A beautiful example of this from English: I remember years ago a t.v. commercial about a movie which I never saw, The World According to Garth. In the t.v. spot Robin Williams was standing by a small plane that he had crashed (as I recall) and shouting to a woman in a second floor window of a house, "Do you mind if I use your phone?" The woman responded, "Yeh, if you can find it." Now, if we were just learning English and we analyzed this sentence lexically, grammatically, and syntactically we would come up with the reality that this woman DOES MIND if he uses her phone (Yeh=Yes) and especially or under the condition that he should FIND her phone. In actual communication what was the woman telling ole Robin Williams? She was telling him it was o.k. with her if he used her phone. Just the OPPOSITE of her answer "Yeh" (I mind if you use my phone.).
That, my friends, is what I consider to be pragmatics. Language has to be taken the way it is USED in speech contexts...not stopping with the grammar and sytax. Just because a verb form is IMPERATIVE in Greek you should not assume that it has to represent a COMMAND. Language is much more flexible than that.
glenden p. riddle
albuquerque, NM
"Dr. Don Wilkins" <drdwilkins at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
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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