[B-Greek] Solecisms in the book of Revelation

Leonard Jayawardena leonardj at live.com
Mon Aug 18 08:05:29 EDT 2008


Don Wilkins wrote:
Just a quick response to Carl's comment on the solecisms. Aside from the theological issues, which are rightly off limits here, it seems to me that John's solecisms are sufficiently violent that we would expect to find Revelation riddled with many others, if the comparatively few that we do find were not deliberate. It's the old story: you have to know the rules to (deliberately) break the rules. If John really didn't know better, then it's a minor miracle that he could write coherent Greek overall.
LJ: While there can be little doubt that some grammatical irregularities in the book of Revelation are deliberate, I am not sure whether all of them can be considered to be so. 
 
In chapter 14, hEKATON TESSERAKONTA TESSARES CHILIADES in v. 1 is followed by the feminine participle ECHOUSAI, but the identical phrase in v. 3 is followed by the masculine participle HGORASMENOI. This inconsistency is clearly deliberate to indicate that the 144,000, who represent the church, are neither exclusively female nor exclusively male. In v. 4 they are again masculine in hOUTOI EISIN hOI META GUNAIKWN OUK EMOLUNQHSAN, but by immediately adding PARQENOI GAR EISIN the writer makes it clear that he is not talking about males only.  (Incidentally, I think there is an allusion to 2 Samuel 21:4-5 in the words hOUTOI EISIN .... EMOLUNQHSAN.)  I stand on correction but to my knowledge the use of PARQENOS in reference to males is not found in literature before the NT and the "exception" here is not really an exception because PARQENOI does not actually refer to males in this verse. PARQENOS is used in 2 Corinthians 11:2 in reference to the church as the antitype of Eve, whose union with Adam symbolizes the spiritual union between Christ and the church, his bride.  
 
However, there seems to be a genuine grammatical error in Revelation 7:9: The participle "clothed" (PERIBEBLHMENOUS) is accusative plural, whereas we would expect it to be nominative plural (PERIBEBLHMENOI) to agree with the noun phrase ‘great multitude’ like the participle ‘standing’ (hESTWTES). Again, hESTWTES and PERIBEBLHMENOUS are plural in spite of the subject OCHLOS being singular because of notional concordance (?), but the relative pronoun following the same subject in v. 9 is hON, whereas consistency would demand that it be hOUS. 
 
A solecism can be regarded as deliberate if there is any discernible intention behind it but what conceivable purpose could there have been, for example, for the first-mentioned irregularity mentioned in the preceding paragraph, i.e., why is "clothed" in the accusative instead of in the nominative?
 
 
Leonard Jayawardena
Sri Lanka
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