[B-Greek] Solecisms in the book of Revelation: Demotic?

Randall Buth randallbuth at gmail.com
Wed Aug 20 15:17:25 EDT 2008


Nice post, Carl.
And you are correct about my intentions. I don't think either that John brought
EIS KAQ EIS directly from Hebrew, nor that he intended it as "sub-standard"
(like O HN in Revelation).
Rather, it is an intrusion from a sub-standard dialect. The correct dropping of
a vowel in hiatus and Qeta before EIS 'one' shows its 'well-formedness'
within the Greek world, howbeit, definitely non-standard or sub-standard.
However, one wants to label it. The gospel writer intended it as Greek, and
it is, of a sort.

ερρωσο
ιωανης


2008/8/20 Carl Conrad <cwconrad2 at mac.com>:
> I had thought we'd finished with this topic, leaving it as a matter of
> disagreement between Don Wilkins and myself, but apparently there's more
> interest in this matter that at first seemed evident -- quite apart from the
> ongoing endeavors to unsnarl issues of "Who's who" and "Who did what" in
> Revelation, most of which questions don't really seem concerned with the
> Greek text as Greek text so much as with the effort to find or demonstrate
> some inner consistency in what has always seemed to me a more-or-less
> kaleidoscopic perspective on TA ESCATA.
>
> Randall's question about εἷς καθ' εἷς hEIS KAQ' hEIS (John 8:9) and Don
> Wilkins' repeated claim that the author of Revelation employs "intentional
> solecism" have sent me scurrying back to BDF and some interesting issues of
> linguistic history. I am wondering whether what we are seeing in the author
> of Revelation and occasionally elsewhere in the GNT is not so much
> deliberate usage of what the writer knows to be "improper" Greek but rather
> Demotic intrusions into a text that the writer intends to compose in
> "standard" Greek. Some of the non-standard or "solecistic" items we note in
> the GNT and other Koine texts exemplify usage that will become much more
> common and ultimately even standard in the later language. One of these
> interesting developments in Greek linguistic history is the gradual fixation
> of nominative forms that may derive from what were originally accusative
> forms, some of the nominative forms then ultimately becoming indeclinable.
> An example is the modern Greek active participle: let's take a verb that
> survives in MG from AG: βλέπω (BLEPW). The present active participle in MG
> is βλέποντας (BLEPONTAS). Superficially this looks like an accusative plural
> of the ancient participle, but in fact it is the accusative singular form
> with a nominative -S ending appended to it; the form is in fact
> indeclinable, as is evident in a sentence that might confound an unwary
> ancient Greek reader: βλέποντας, δέ βλέπει (BLEPONTAS, DE BLEPEI) "Seeing,
> he does not see," i.e. "Although endowed with eyesight, he doesn't see."
>
> A comparable "solecism" that I had long failed to understand is the
> "nominative" πλήρης [PLHRHS] in John 1:14       Καὶ ὁ λόγος σὰρξ ἐγένετο καὶ
> ἐσκήνωσεν ἐν ἡμῖν, καὶ ἐθεασάμεθα τὴν δόξαν αὐτοῦ, δόξαν ὡς μονογενοῦς παρὰ
> πατρός, πλήρης χάριτος καὶ ἀληθείας. [KAI hO LOGOS SARX EGENETO KAI
> ESKHNWSEN EN hHMIN, KAI EQEASAMEQA THN DOXAN AUTOU, DOXAN hWS MONOGENOUS
> PARA PATROS, PLHRHS CARITOS KAI ALHQEIAS]. It seems we ought to have an
> accusative form πλήρη [PLHRH] to agree with δόξαν [DOXAN], the object of
> ἐθεασάμεθα [EQEASAMEQA]. But apparently the originally nominative form
> πλήρης [PLHRHS] of this adjective has come to be -- or is on the way in
> Koine to becoming  indeclinable. BDAG has a very good account of this s.v.
> PLHRHS §2: "In some of the passages already mentioned πλήρης is indecl.,
> though never without v.l., and almost only when it is used w. a gen.,
> corresponding to an Engl. expression such as 'a work full of errors'" One
> might note Acts 6:5 ... Στέφανον, ἄνδρα πλήρης πίστεως καὶ πνεύματος ἁγίου
> [STEFANON, ANDRA PLHRHS PISTEWS KAI PNEUMATOS hAGIOU]. What we're dealing
> with here is not, I think, an "intentional solecism" but rather an intrusion
> of a Demotic usage into writing that the author really intends to keep more
> formal and conformant to "school" usage. I will get to the bearing of these
> observations on εἷς καθ' εἷς [hEIS KAQ' hEIS] down below.
>
> On Aug 15, 2008, at 2:28 PM, Don Wilkins (drdwilkins at sbcglobal.net)  wrote:
>
>> Just a quick response to Carl's comment on the solecisms.  ...  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.
>
>
> Don and I have agreed to disagree about this "deliberate use of solecisms"
> -- but it remains inexplicable to me why a writer who seems to know better
> would deliberately employ unacceptable grammar. I think there must be some
> explanation for each instance of "intentional solecism" if the usage really
> is intentional: WHY does a writer employ a solecism in any particular
> instance? We've explored some explanations for some of these (e.g. Iver re
> Rev. 7:9 where an implicit EIDON may explain the questionable accusative
> PERIBEBLHMENOUS, or a perhaps implicit infinitive POREUESQAI might explain a
> use of an accusative hUPODEDEMENOUS in Mark 6:9. But such usages as these
> could not be called "intentional" solecism; they fall rather under the
> classification of constructions where something unexpressed seems to have
> been understood in the writer's mind and intention, something that a reader
> might be expected to infer from the context. On the other hand, I think I
> could be accused of "intentional solecism" if, upon being told repeatedly
> that I MUST perform a certain action without further ado, I responded with,
> "Well, I AIN'T gonna do that, and that's all there is to it!" Here "ain't"
> is unacceptable English, but I would be using it to underscore a stubborn
> resolution to follow my own counsel despite the advice of others.
>
> Upon further reflection, therefore, I've come to think that these
> "solecisms" in Revelation are to be explained --  NOT in terms of a
> deliberate indulgence in non-standard grammar by an author who clearly knows
> how to write "school" Greek -- but RATHER in terms of a slackening in the
> effort to compose the text in conformity to what one knows to be good
> "written" Greek and a slip-up that allows a usage that is not uncommon in
> the "spoken" Greek of everyday conversation.
> At any rate, that seems to me a much more reasonable explanation for the
> "solecisms" in Revelation than that we are dealing in each instance with a
> deliberate violation of the norms of written Greek.
>
> On Aug 19, 2008, at 3:12 PM, Bil buss (Paladin343 at aol.com) wrote:
>
>> Hi everyone,
>>  Can anyone point me in the direction of scholarly works that list and/or
>> discuss solecisms in the Gospels, Acts and Revelation?
>
> I would think there must be some bibliography on this subject, but I only
> know of good material in BDF and some really fine information buried in the
> sub-headings of BDAG.
> As for bibliographies, I find that Micheal Palmer's excellent site is still
> accessible at http://www.greek-language.com/ , and more specifically his
> page, http://greek-language.com/bibliographies/#Greek%20Linguistics (=
> http://tinyurl.com/5dnmsr); the reference to Rod Decker's page is there, but
> note it directly anyway: http://faculty.bbc.edu/RDecker/bibliog.htm
>
> In BDF  I already called attention in an earlier post to §§136-7 ("More
> Serious Incongruencies (Solecisms)" (pp. 75-76). But there's good stuff
> that's relevant at other points in this book that is a much more useful
> reference than is commonly recognized. I'll note one such item below with
> regard to εἷς καθ' εἷς hEIS KAQ' hEIS.
>
> On Aug 19, 2008, at 6:03 AM, Randall Buth (randallbuth at gmail.com) wrote:
>
>> While on the subject of solecisms, how do you all like εἷς καθ' εἷς EIS
>> KAQ' EIS ?
>> It seems intentional enough with the correct dropping of e vowel in KATA,
>> plus the correct Q θ before the word EIS 'one'.
>> Proper Greek would say KAQ' ENA καθ΄ ενα, though I can readily understand
>> KAQ EIS as a sub-standard dialect nominalization that even rhymes with a
>> Hebrew "ish ish".
>
> On Aug 19, 2008, at 3:33 PM, Don Wilkins (drdwilkins at sbcglobal.net)  wrote:
>
>> Another good example of "intentional solecism" IMO, probably resulting
>> from the influence of a foreign idiom as you point out. If the writer used
>> KATA correctly in other constructions, we wouldn't infer from this anomaly
>> that he was ignorant of the proper use of KATA.
>
> Again, I think that "intentional solecism" is a curious and infelicitous
> term suggestive (perhaps even intended by Don to mean) of deliberate
> injection of substandard usage into a text that is generally marked by good
> standard usage, an injection, moreover, that serves some intelligible
> rhetorical strategy. If that term is to be used, I would expect an
> explanation of what rhetorical strategy each such usage in Revelation is
> supposed to serve.
>
> I don't think either that Randall really intended to suggest that hEIS KAQ'
> hEIS derives from foreign idiom. What we have here seems better explained in
> BDF § 305 with respect to "Each" under the heading of Pronominal
> Adjectives":
>
> "305. 'Each'. ῞Εκαστος hEKASTOS, intensified εἷς ἕκαστος hEIS hEKASTOS.
> Fropm the distributive use of κατὰ KATA (ἀνὰ ANA, §248(1)), καθ' KAQ' (ἀνὰ
> ANA) εἷς hEIS developed, since καθ' ἕνα ἕκααστον KAQ' hENA hEKASTON became
> fixed as καθένα ἕκαστον KAQENA hEKASTON and a corresponding nom. was
> created: thus MGr καθείς KAQEIS καθένας KAQENAS 'each'; cf. Jannaris §664;
> W.-S. p. 247 n.; Psaltes 192. Yet not many examples of this vulgarism are
> found in the NT."
>
> So John 8:9 οἱ δὲ ἀκούσαντες ἐξήρχοντο εἷς καθ᾿ εἷς ἀρξάμενοι ἀπὸ τῶν
> πρεσβυτέρων καὶ κατελείφθη μόνος καὶ ἡ γυνὴ ἐν μέσῳ οὖσα. [hOI DE AKOUSANTES
> EXHRCONTO hEIS KAQ' hEIS ARXAMENOI APO TWN PRESBYTERWN KAI KATELEIFQH MONOS
> KAI hH GUNH EN MESWi OUSA]. Although it's possible to read εἷς καθ᾿ εἷς hEIS
> KAQ' hEIS as a pronoun subject of EXHRCONTO, even Englishing it as "one by
> one," the phrase as pronominal seems rather to be "each individual" ( =
> hEKASTOS) functions more or less adverbially as "individually" and the
> second hEIS with its preceding KAQ' is not conceived grammatically as a
> nominative at all.
>
> In Modern Greek "each one, every one" is καθένας KAQENAS  (Demotic), καθείς
> KAQEIS (Katharevousa). καθένας KAQENAS is derivative -- like the MGr
> participle noted above -- from the accusative καθένα KAQENA with addition of
> the nominative ending -ς -S.
> κάθε KAQE, we might note, seems to be in indeclinable adjective/pronoun
> meaning "each" or "every."
>
> Another quite comparable and interesting (from the perspective of Koine and
> a diachronic perspective on Greek) is κανένας KANENAS (Demotic), κανείς
> KANEIS (Katharevousa, with fem. KANEMIA, n. KANENA), meaning "none," "no
> one," or "not any." This derives ultimately from AGr κἀν KAN, earlier καὶ ἂν
> KAI AN, still earlier καὶ ἐὰν KAI EAN "even if" -- and ἕνα/εἷς hENA/hEIS.
> κάνε KANE, as might be expected, is an indeclinable adjective/pronoun
> meaning "none," not any."
>
> In sum then, I think that these "solecisms" in Revelation and elsewhere in
> the GNT are best explained as intrusions into a written composition of
> expressions that are already used in "demotic" speech but usually do not get
> used in writing.
>
> Carl W. Conrad
> Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
>
>
>
>



-- 
Randall Buth, PhD
www.biblicalulpan.org
randallbuth at gmail.com
Biblical Language Center
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