[B-Greek] historical present in Luke
bitan buth
ybitan at mscc.huji.ac.il
Sun Oct 9 13:35:41 EDT 2005
MARKW XAIREIN
Thank you for adding Luke 24:12. Yes, I accept "p75 and everyone"
against the Wescott-Hort 'non-interpoloation.'
Your scepticism on missing features is both useful and expected.
(After all, there is not one Matthean 'narrative tote' in Luke.)
I would expect that authors will rewrite features that may remove 60-95%
of a source's examples.
But you will permit me scepticism on claims that an author would remove
99-100% of a feature WHEN he does, in fact, use it on his own more than
once or twice.
Cf. Moulton, Prog. 121 "Luke would have Greek education enough to know
that it [HP] was not common in the cultured speech of his time, but not
enough to recall the encouragement of classical writers."
Comments about Luke systematically removing all historical presents
because of their vulgarity (while not attributing such views to yourself,
nor accepting the absolute vulgarity of HP), stikes me as not
explaining Luke's own feelings. Always possible, just not probable. It may
be better to see it as a disturbing problem rather than repeated during
the twentieth century as quasi-fact (or else ignored).
Braxot le-Shana tova
Randall Buth
>> Luke actually has a few more historical presents:
>> Luke 7:40, 8:49, 11:37, 11:45.
>> Only one, 8:49, is parallel to Mark (close but not an exact quote)
>> and there are another 13 in Acts,
>
>There's also 24.12, when Peter goes to Jesus' tomb, KAI PARAKUYAS
>BLEPEI TA OQONIA MONA. I've always thought that Luke's more sparing
>use of the historic present makes it all the more striking and
>dramatic here, "And you know what? He is looking at the burial
>cloths alone". It's one of the interesting links between Luke and
>John too, of course -- John 20.5, KAI PARAKUYAS BLEPEI KEIMENA TA
>OQONIA .
>
>> The above stylistic evidence is another thread that points to
>> Luke using a source that was not Mark, a shared source with our Mark.
>> Mark would have added his own layer of historic presents to this shared
>> source.
>> See Buth-Kvasnica, on parable of vineyard, in Notley, ed.,
>> forthcoming Brill, 2005, supposedly in time for SBL.
>
>I look forward to seeing the article. My own tendency is to be
>sceptical of source-critical arguments that stress a given
>evangelist's failure to include a given trait in a putative source,
>e.g. cf. Delbert Burkett's recent book that does a lot with this kind
>of argument.
>
>With best wishes
>Mark
Randall Buth, PhD
Biblical Language Center
www.biblicalulpan.org
c/o margbuth at gmail.com
also, Director, Biblical Studies in Israel
under Rothberg International School,
Hebrew University
ybitan at mscc.huji.ac.il
More information about the B-Greek
mailing list