[B-Greek] (no subject)

William Warren wfwarren at aol.com
Sun Nov 20 14:16:59 EST 2005


Yancy, this is exactly the case for many 3rd person imperatives as I  
understand them in the Greek language. The 3rd person command is a  
means of honoring the social considerations of the situation with  
politeness and indirect speech/commands.  We would often classify  
such matters as "requests" in English since that is our way of  
describing this type of interaction.  But the difference between a  
social request and a command is yet another discussion of semantics,  
linguistics, cultural norms, and social relationships that likely  
should take place in a different forum.

paz,

Bill Warren
Director of the Center for New Testament Textual Studies
Landrum P. Leavell, II, Professor of New Testament and Greek
New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary

On Nov 16, 2005, at 11:13 PM, Yancy Smith wrote:

> If you count all these up, it seems that the 3rd person command form
> is more often used as a form of command for 2nd persons, albeit
> polite or indirect, rather than for a true 3rd person command.




More information about the B-Greek mailing list