[B-Greek] Mark 1:31
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at ioa.com
Tue Oct 18 08:52:48 EDT 2005
On Oct 18, 2005, at 8:15 AM, A. J. Birch wrote:
> Dan Gleason asked three questions about Mark 1:31: "KAI PROSELQWN
> HGEIREN AUTHN KRATHSAS THS CEIROS; KAI AFHKEN AUTHN hO PURETOS, KAI
> DIHKONEI AUTOIS;" and Dr. Conrad responded...
>
> I may be wrong, but I just wondered if Dr. Conrad responded to ALL
> that Dan Gleason was asking:
I may not have, but I did think that the thrust of the question was
overmuch upon the particular action of Jesus that was instrumental in
the healing or at least in the "raising."
> (1) Dan asked (at the end of his first question), "did he have to
> take her hand to raise her", which I take to refer more to KRATHSAS
> than to PROSELQWN, whereas Dr. Conrad's response to Dan's first
> question is mainly, if not exclusively, concerned with PROSELQWN
> (at least, as I understand it). Is KRATHSAS temporal or causal, or
> both?
Dan's question in fact reads: "Or did he have to take her hand to
raise her?" I replied "I don't think the narrator is concerned with
telling us what Jesus WAS REQUIRED to do to heal the woman." And I do
not think the narrator means to tell us that the grasping by hand was
in and of itself the required action of Jesus for healing the woman.
I would agree that the position of KRATHSAS suggests coordination
with HGEIREN that is more than temporal; it may indeed be causal. I
think that the fundamental sense of HGEIREN AUTHN KRATHSAS THS CEIROS
is "helped her to her feet by grasping her hand."
> (2) Might the verb KRATEW, related as it is to KRATOS, imply
> something more than just taking hold of the woman's hand: EXERTING
> POWER BY taking hold of her hand, or whatever?
I frankly think that this is asking more than the Greek narrative
provides. You might say too that there's ambiguity of sorts in the
verb HGEIREN: what this means most essentially is "caused to get up"
or (if imperfect rather than aorist) "helped her get up (from her
reclining position)." Personally I doubt that we ought to read
particular (theological) implications in the choice of the verb
HGEIREN here, although I can understand how some, comparing the
phrasing in the story of the deaf-mute in Mk 9:27 might think so: the
man is thrashing on the ground; then hO DE IHSOUS KRATHSAS THS
CEIROS AUTOU HGEIREN AUTON, KAI ANESTH. Here too I think the
fundamental sense is "Then Jesus grasped his hand and helped him up,
and he stood."
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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