[B-Greek] AGGELOS in Acts 27:23: suspenseful hyperbaton?

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Wed Feb 28 07:39:47 EST 2007


In the very first of his HELLENISTI GINOSKEIS notes on Tuesday,  
February 20, the recently-announced new blogger Daniel J. Phillips  
called attention to the striking word-order of Acts 27:23 (http:// 
tinyurl.com/2h5nm3):

Text: PARESTH GAR MOI TAUTHi THi NUKTI TOU QEOU, hOU EIMI [EGW] hWi  
KAI LATREUW, AGGELOS.

Remarkable here are (a) the  hyperbaton of QEOU ... AGGELOS, and (b)  
the final position of AGGELOS. It would certainly appear that AGGELOS  
is being held in suspense for the effect -- the more remarkable, it  
would seem, when we bear in mind that ancient texts were written not  
for a reader's eye but for an audience's ear.

As Phillips rightly notes, later scribes felt obliged to "correct"  
this text so that it would read: PARESTH GAR MOI TAUTHi THi NUKTI  
AGGELOS QEOU, hOU EIMI, hWi KAI LATREUW. That's the way it appears in  
Textus Receptus and in the Majority Text. Of course that's the way  
it's translated in the KJV A quick check of standard English  
translations shows no indication that the hyperbaton has been taken  
into account in the English version, unless it is in Eugene  
Peterson's The Message, which offers,     "Last night God's angel  
stood at my side, an angel of this God I serve," Surely Peterson  
intended to carry over the force of the hyperbaton in this formulation.

One may, of course, claim that TOU QEOU, hOU EIMI [EGW] hWi KAI  
LATREUW is the prominent element in this formulation; I wouldn't  
dispute that myself -- BUT -- I do think that AGGELOS has a climactic  
impact of its own when it is heard at last following those other  
words, and I am not convinced that it is just a secondary consequence  
of the intrusion of the insistent declaration of Paul's own intimacy  
with the God who has sent this vision. Or do we say that TR and MT  
got it right and that NA27 prints the aberrant formulation of the  
early MSS that couldn't possibly be right?

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad2 at mac.com
WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/





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