[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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