[B-Greek] Solecisms in the book of Revelation

Carl Conrad cwconrad2 at mac.com
Mon Aug 18 15:08:49 EDT 2008


On Aug 18, 2008, at 2:52 PM, Dr. Don Wilkins wrote:

> PERIBEBLHMENOUS is not so much a matter of middle vs. passive, which  
> Carl has clarified; rather, the unexpected accusative forces the  
> reader to think of the unexpressed actor who has dressed the  
> multitude. To me, the effect is similar to one of attraction (which  
> redirects the reader's attention elsewhere), though I don't think  
> that there is any kind of attraction to STOLAS LEUKAS.
>
> I would agree with Carl that Semitic idioms probably play a part  
> here, though it does not seem necessary to explain the PANTOS  
> construction. It is natural enough to assume that PANTOS is meant to  
> cover everything; otherwise, you would need a string of PAS forms  
> that would give the phrase a different nuance.  Carl's constructio  
> ad sensum certainly explains the singular/plural mismatch. It also  
> explains the AUTWN with FOINIKES. As for FOINIKES itself, unless I'm  
> missing something, one needs only to add an understood HSAN to make  
> FOINIKES the subject of its own clause.
>
> If one really attributes all these constructions to the inexperience  
> or ignorance of a non-native Greek speaker, then how does one  
> explain John's overall fidelity to standard grammar and syntax? It  
> seems to me that if these constructions are blunders, then we either  
> have someone who is struggling with the basic demands of grammatical  
> agreement etc.--in which case we should expect the book to be  
> overrun with similar blunders--or we have the work of an old man who  
> is just getting careless. The latter may seem reasonable, but in  
> that case I would still expect to see a lot more of the same.

There really is no point in carrying this forward; we clearly have a  
fundamental difference of opinion here. I just don't discern this  
author's) certainly not the same John as that of other Johannine docs  
in the GNT) "overall fidelity to standard grammar and syntax." If he  
gets it right much of the time, he gets it wrong too often., and the  
argument that the lapses are all deliberate is one that many will find  
hard to swallow. GB Shaw once quipped, "God saw that the world that he  
had created was good; I looked at it and saw that it could be  
improved." Evidently later scribes who copied the text of Revelation  
"saw that it could be improved."

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

>
> On Aug 18, 2008, at 9:39 AM, Carl Conrad wrote:
>
>>
>> On Aug 18, 2008, at 4:28 AM, Vasile Stancu wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: b-greek-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org
>>> [mailto:b-greek-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Leonard
>>> Jayawardena
>>> Sent: Monday, August 18, 2008 9:05 PM
>>> To: b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org
>>> Subject: [B-Greek] Solecisms in the book of Revelation
>>>
>>> Leonard Jayawardena wrote:
>>>
>>> ... 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?
>>> -----------------------------------
>>>
>>> Could it be that the accusative is used here in order to emphasise
>>> more
>>> strongly the idea of (passively) "being clothed by somebody else" as
>>> compared to the middle voice action of "just having clothed
>>> themselves"?
>>>
>>> Vasile STANCU
>>
>> Rev. 7:9 	Μετὰ ταῦτα εἶδον, καὶ ἰδοὺ
>> ὄχλος πολύς, ὃν ἀριθμῆσαι αὐτὸν
>> οὐδεὶς ἐδύνατο, ἐκ παντὸς ἔθνους
>> καὶ φυλῶν καὶ λαῶν καὶ γλωσσῶν
>> ἑστῶτες ἐνώπιον τοῦ θρόνου καὶ
>> ἐνώπιον τοῦ ἀρνίου  
>> περιβεβλημένους
>> στολὰς λευκὰς καὶ φοίνικες ἐν ταῖς
>> χερσὶν αὐτῶν,
>>
>> META TAUTA EIDON, KAI IDOU OCLOS POLUS, hON ARIQMHSAI AUTON OUDEIS
>> EDUNATO, EK PANTOS EQNOUS KAI FULWN KAI LAWN KAI GLWSSWN hESTWTES
>> ENWPION TOU QRONOU KAI ENWPION TOU ARNIOU PERIBEBLHMENOUS STOLAS
>> LEUKAS KAI FOINIKES EN TAIS CERSIN AUTWN.
>>
>> No, I don't think so. For one thing PERIBALLW (active) does mean
>> "clothe (someone)" but PERIBALLOMAI (middle) is standard for "put  
>> on,"
>> "clothe oneself (with)" -- with an accusative of what is worn or EN +
>> dative. Cf. BDAG §2. It's conceivable that the accusative
>> PERIBEBLHMENOUS is "attracted" into the case of STOLAS LEUKAS. The  
>> new
>> white garment is, I think, what the initiate puts on after passing
>> through initiation and becoming a new person.
>>
>> This verse is interesting syntactically as a whole. Note also the
>> superfluous AUTON in the hON clause -- explicable from Semitic usage
>> but questionably added deliberately. The sequence EK PANTOS EQNOUS  
>> KAI
>> FULWN KAI LAWN KAI GLWSSWN is somewhat odd, where we'd expect a  
>> PANTWN
>> before the genitive plurals -- this too is explicable if one thinks  
>> in
>> terms of the "undeclined"  Heb. KOL for "every/all." Then too there's
>> not just the odd PERIBEBLHMENOUS phrase following the OCLOS POLUS ...
>> hESTWTES -- which one might explain as "constructio ad sensum"-- but
>> the final FOINIKES EN TAIS CERSIN AUTWN is "out of whack" with the
>> initial construction which is concerned with the "great throng" --  
>> now
>> we have a nominative FOINIKES and the AUTWN referring to the people
>> constituting the OCLOS. I think this sequence is hardly explicable in
>> terms of deliberate violation of norms of Greek syntax for some sort
>> of emphasis; it is explained better by supposing that the author was
>> not a native Greek-speaker/writer.
>>
>> BDF §136" (5) More Serious Incongruencies (Solecisms)" notes,
>> "Revelation exhibits a quantity of striking solecisms which are based
>> especially on inattention to agreement (a rough style), in contrast  
>> to
>> the rest of the NT and to the other writings ascribed to John ... "
>>
>> I can readily believe that the marvelous sequence, hO WN KAI hO HN  
>> KAI
>> hO ERCOMENOS (Rev 1:4, cf. 11:17, 16:5, ) may be deliberate -- but  
>> I'm
>> not so ready to concede that APO hO WN here in Rev 1:4 is deliberate.







More information about the B-Greek mailing list