[B-Greek] Periphrastic imperatives

Jon Rumble jon.rumble at gmail.com
Wed Nov 16 03:16:45 EST 2005


Hi,

I've had particular trouble thinking about the third-person
imperatives in 1 Timothy (where they seem to be more packed in than
anywhere else!).

For example: 1 Timothy 4:12

MHDEIS SOU THS NEOTHTOS KATAFRONEITW ALLA TUPOS GINOU TWN PISTWN EN
LOGW EN ANASTROFH EN AGAPH EN PISTEI EN AGNEIA

"Let no one despise you for your youth, but set the believers an
example in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, in purity." ESV

In English it comes accross as a 2nd person command to Timothy "do not
allow anyone to despise you", and this seems to make sense in that the
following 2nd person imperative instruction expands on how he might do
that; is that a valid use of the 3rd person imperative, a second
person command with special reference to a 3rd person or is that
missing the point?

Many of the other examples in 1 Timothy: 2:11, 3:10, 3:12, 5:4, 5:9,
5:16, 5:17, 6:1 also seem as though they could be taken either way.
Either Paul is writing to Timothy with the understanding that the
letter would be read more broadly and using 3rd person imperatives to
exhort others, or perhaps it's more of a second-person command with
reference to a 3rd person again? I find 5:17 particularly interesting
since it's a 3rd person imperative passive, a contradiction in terms
to my English way of thinking!

Thanks for your thoughts,

Jon Rumble



On 11/12/05, Carl W. Conrad <cwconrad at ioa.com> wrote:
> I've been watching the thread on third-person commands, jussives,
> etc. with interest but with little or nothing to contribute to the
> discussion -- and what I will throw in here may not add much to the
> discussion either. I'm not even sure that I understood the original
> question posed by Don Wilkins that brought us into this exploration.
>
> Nevertheless, what I've been pondering is that even in English we use
> "let" as an auxiliary with an infinitive for hortatory expressions
> "let us pray" or "let's go to bed" and also for third-person jussive
> expressions: "let the games begin!" or "let it go." French uses
> "laisser" with an infinitive as does German with "lassen" (John
> Kennedy started using the refrain in his Berlin address, "Let them
> come to Berlin! and soon the audience was shouting, "Lass sie nach
> Berlin kommen!").
>
> French uses a simple subjunctive with "que" for the third-person
> jussive: "qu'ils viennent vite!" and German can use a simple
> subjunctive to express the third-person jussive: "moege es immer
> dauern!" In English we can occasionally use an infinitive as an
> imperative; occasionally ancient Greek could do that too.
>
> Already Koine Greek is anticipating the Modern Greek AS NA +
> subjunctive with AFES/AFETE + hINA + subjunctive -- but of course
> hINA + subjunctive is already on its way in Koine Greek to becoming
> the Modern Greek infinitive. Latin uses "sin/sinete" with a
> subjunctive as a colloquial imperative (I remember my shock in
> finding it in Vergil's Aeneid 6).
>
> Then there's the "polite" imperative: "Please do this for me" --
> whether that be a form of "I plead with you" or "if it please(s) you"
> or "if you please"; for that German has forms of "beten" ("bitte") as
> English has "bid" and Modern Greek has PARAKALW, which like German
> "bitte" means both "please" with a request and "you're welcome" in
> response to a "thank you." Classical Greek used EAW much as Koine and
> Modern Greek do AFIHMI/AFIW, and OUK EAW as an equivalent of KELEUW
> in legal formula "the law does not allow ..."
>
> Is there a significant difference between an optative in Greek and a
> third-person imperative? How is Paul using MH GENOITO, his
> distinctive response to rhetorical questions? is it different from
> the emphatic aorist subjunctive, OU MH GENHTAI? ERRETW is used in
> colloquial ancient Greek for "to hell with it!" as "pereat" is used
> in Latin. What of "Damn"? Is that a third-person jussive expression
> in origin in English -- a subjunctive third-person form?  What's the
> force of "to hell with so-and-so!"?
>
> What of the Lord's Prayer petitions hAGIASQHTW TO ONOMA SOU, ELQETW
> hH BASILEIA SOU, GENHQHTW TO QELHMA SOU? Are they stronger than would
> be optatives, e.g. hAGIASQEIH, ELQOI, GENOITO? I'm not sure, but it
> would appear that the morphological third-person imperatives endured
> in spoken Greek longer than did the optative for wishes and prayers
> -- or were both third-person imperative and optative really archaic
> in Koine and employed as we use archaic diction only in legal and
> liturgical usage?
>
> I remember many years ago when I was a lowly exchange student in
> Munich I read a wonderful little book entitled "Ein tausend Worte
> Bayrisch" or something like that (it wasn't "Woerter" either); it had
> a curious little chapter on four ways of expressing what in English
> (and in other languages also, I'm sure) a rather standard emphatic
> dismissal: there was the simple "Go to hell" sort of expression:
> "Leck mi am Arsch!" Then there was a more emphatic variation: "Am
> Arsch sollst mi lecka!" I found particularly curious one form of it
> which expressed a sort of puzzlement: "Du leckst mi am Arsch!" --
> spoken more or less as we'd say in English, "Well, I'll be damned!"
>
> Is there a point to this? I'm not really sure, beyond that the third-
> person imperative, the subjunctive, the optative, auxiliaries with
> infinitives or infinitives by themselves all seem to be used with a
> considerable variety and range of rhetorical force. I rather think
> that these usages cannot be spelled out by grammatical "rules" --
> rather, I think, one must come to know the moods and faces of a
> language as one does with a person whom one loves or detests or
> fears;  one must have the ear of a talented humorist to discern and
> reproduce at will these expressions that are to colloquial speech
> what the emoticons are to digital expression.
>
> I don't know if that helps or not with the questions raised, but I do
> think that the usage of third-person imperatives probably can't be
> expounded in any very simple catalogue.
>
> Carl W. Conrad
> Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
> 1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
> cwconrad2 at mac.com
> WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/
>
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