[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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