[B-Greek] Luke 5:35 KAI hOTAN
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Thu Jul 5 08:07:46 EDT 2007
On Jul 5, 2007, at 7:30 AM, Jonathan Robie wrote:
> Luke 5:35 (Unicode)
>
> ἐλεύσονται δὲ ἡμέραι,
> **καὶ ὅταν** ἀπαρθῇ ἀπ αὐτῶν ὁ
> νυμφίος
> τότε νηστεύσουσιν
> ἐν ἐκείναις ταῖς ἡμέραις.
>
> Luke 5:35 (B-Greek Transcription)
>
> ELEUSONTAI DE hHMERAI
> **KAI hOTAN** APARQH AP AUTWN hO NUMPHIOS
> TOTE NHSTEUSOUSIN
> EN EKEINAIS TAIS hHMERAIS
>
> I'm trying to grasp the force of KAI hOTAN in this text. The comma
> before it
> and my perhaps English sense of KAI make me think it should say
> something like:
>
> "But the days are coming, and when the bridegroom has been taken
> from them ...."
>
> But at least one reliable translation treats this more like:
>
> "But the days are coming when the bridegroom is taken from them..."
>
> What is the force of KAI hOTAN here?
It should be noted that all 3 Synoptics (Mk 220; Mt 9:15; Lk 5:35)
have ELEUSONTAI DE hHMERAI, but while Mark and Matthew have
ELEUSONTAI DE hHMERAI hOTAN ..., Luke alone has ELEUSONTAI DE
hHMERAI, KAI hOTAN ... I think that the phrasing is somewhat awkward
in Mark and Matthew in that the hOTAN APARQHi clause seems to be
functioning as a relative adverbial clause in apposition to hHMERAI.
Luke's version, whether taken from Mark or directly from tradition,
appears to be rephrased in a better grammatical formulation:
ELEUSONTAI DE hHMERAI would appear to mean "they can't fast while
they have the bridegroom with them, but the time will come -- and AT
SUCH TIME (hOTAN) as the bridegroom is taken from them, THEN they
will fast IN THOSE DAYS ... " If you look at the parallel Synoptic
texts, you may note that EN EKEINAIS TAIS hHMERAIS is missing from
the accounts in Mark and Matthew. Here it seems that EN EKEINAIS TAIS
hHMERAIS explicitly refers back to ELEUSONTAI DE hHMERAI.
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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