[B-Greek] "Were I to seek examples of the subjunctive ... "

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Thu Apr 17 07:14:16 EDT 2008


 From the blogs this morning comes something to which Joe Weaks, who  
hasn't been active much recently on B-Greek, but who is a sharp and  
helpful cookie, calls attention in his "Macintosh Biblioblog" (http://macbiblioblog.blogspot.com/ 
) - a nice little piece by John August on the English subjunctive.  
Inasmuch as the English subjunctive is obsolescent but by no means  
obsolete in written and even in spoken English, one might find some  
useful notes on it in this article:

http://johnaugust.com/archives/2008/subjunctive

Why this has any bearing upon Biblical Greek matters may not be  
immediately obvious, but my experience is that beginners in Biblical  
Greek tend to have considerable difficulty with the subjunctive in  
Koine Greek, the more so if they are learning from one of those hoary  
primers that urge learners to attempt to convert Greek subjunctives  
into English subjunctives of the sort that really are no longer  
current in English speech even if they sometimes survive in writing.

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Ret)




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