[B-Greek] Matthew 28:17: hOI DE EDISTASAN

bitan buth ybitan at mscc.huji.ac.il
Sun Apr 9 10:57:37 EDT 2006


Sangrey egrapsed:

>So, the natural question to ask is, "Does this develop the narrative?

If one assumes a contrastive group or sub-group, then there is no

development.>

 

This appears to confuse metalanguage. If another group did something
different, then that would certainly be a 'development', too. The problem of
course, is that everything could be called a development. But DE can also
mark parenthetical information and descriptions that have nothing to do with
plot development. DE can go 'off-line' and back 'on-line'.

Actually, I don't like the term 'development' for DE and said so in a
quasi-review 25 years ago, before Levinsohn wrote his book. He is free to
disagree. I prefer to see DE as having two simple features <+change,
+connection>.

 

Back to Mt 28:17--if the same group were both bowing down/worshipping and
doubting I would expect either a participle DISTAZONTES or else KAI
EDISTASAN. 

The text as it stands seems to reflect a very common Greek practice of
marking a change of subject with simply an article O/H/TO/OI/AI/TA plus DE.
(Yes, it is possibly to have a subject change and not MARK it, but the
simple way to mark this is to add DE.)

 

A text comes to mind-- Acts 17:32

AKOUSANTES DE ANASTASIIN NEKRWN  

   and havingheard the resurrection of the dead 

OI MEN EXLEUAZON

   On the one hand some were mocking

OI DE EIPEN

   and others said

AKOUSOMEQA SOU PERI TOUTOU KAI PALIN

   we will listen to you about this again, yes. 

 

This is pretty close. The first DE switches from Paul to his audience. The
audience has a dual reaction that makes two 'groups'. 

Both groups are introduced by OI instead of TINES. 

MEN // DE separate them into two. In any case the last group is just OI DE
"and others". Luke only bothers to use TINES with a more significant subset
two verses later who join Paul's movement. 

 

ERRWSQE

Randall Buth

 

   

 

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

 




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