[B-Greek] Mt 9.18a Indefinite articles
Steve Runge
srunge at logos.com
Mon Mar 17 09:27:53 EDT 2008
Mitch,
The question you are asking has some big ramifications. Here is some background on how definiteness works, and why it is important. In order to talk about something, particularly as a topic, there needs to be a mental 'hook' for the reader or hearer to hang information on. There are several ways to establish this.
First, I could use the 'once upon a time there was a...' approach, where 'there' functions as a dummy subject to introduce the person or thing for further discussion. We start stories this way because we need to mentally have people 'on stage' before the action can begin. No people, no story. If I am going to talk about a princess, I need to get her on stage so that you know who or what I am talking about.
Once someone is on stage, writers can add other players by providing some kind of anchor to connect them to what is already going on. So if Jesus was on stage, we could introduce 'his mother' or 'his disciples' by connecting those folks to him. This is the most common strategy for introducing people or concepts. Going back to the fairy tale analogy, once you finish the 'once upon a time...' part to introduce the initial person ( our princess), one typically finds the introduction of other things by saying things like 'she lived in... and had a.... and....' Introducing these other things as direct objects lets us add them to what we already know about the princess. She is the mental hook, the other information gets hung on it.
But what do you do if there is some new entity that you want to introduce that has no connection to the discourse yet? What if you want to start a story with something other than a 'Once there was a...' opening? There are several shortcut strategies that are found in English, Greek and Hebrew.
The process of introducing an indefinite entity as a direct object allows us to easily bridge the gap from indefinite to definite. You see this in the fact that the newly introduced entity will normally take the definite article (or one of the other strategies for signaling definiteness, see Wallace 1996:244). There is a middle category that is often overlooked in discussions about definiteness, called the 'referential indefinite'. That is just a fancy way of referring to something that is not technically definite, but is definite enough to serve as a hook for you to hang information on.
The most common referential indefinite in English is the 'indefinite this'. Think about how many jokes open up: 'This guy walks into a bar with an alligator.' The hearer would not be able to pick 'this guy' out in a police line up, but he is definite enough to process the rest of the information in the joke.
Many languages will use numerals as a marker of referential infiniteness, which is what we see in Hebrew and in your Mt 9:18 example in Greek. ISH EXAD (lit. one man) in Hebrew is generally translated as 'a certain man'. Again, we could not pick him out of a line up, but he is definite enough to hang information on. 'Definite enough' is the key. I will leave the issue of whether hEIS is borrowed from Hebrew or part of Greek's evolution. Either way, the reader is able to process that ARCWN hEIS is a referential indefinite.
Another strategy used to create a referential indefinite is to use an indefinite marker, which in English is 'indefinite this', and in Greek is TIS. This is why TIS ANQROPOS is typically translated 'a certain man'. In more familiar English we would say 'this guy'.
If you want more on this, I provide a description of the definiteness scale in the introduction of my dissertation, including a table of the forms used in English, Greek and Hebrew for each part of the scale. The PDF version can be found at http://www.logos.com/media/academic/runge/participant_reference.pdf. The table is on p. 33, which is p. 21 of the PDF version.
Probably more than you were looking for, but it is a very important question that you are asking, Mitch.
Regards,
Steve
________________________________
From: b-greek-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org on behalf of Mitch Larramore
Sent: Sun 3/16/2008 8:20 PM
To: B Greek
Subject: [B-Greek] Mt 9.18a Indefinite articles
TAUTA AUTOU LALOUNTOS AUTOIS IDOU ARCWN hEIS ELQWN
PROSEKUNEI AUTWi LEGWN....
To take ARCWN hEIS as "one leader" seems awkward in
this context. I note many translations prefer "a
leader/ruler." It would seem then that this is pretty
clearly to be taken as an indefinite article. Why,
since this indefinite use was readily available to
first century Greeks, did they use it in only rare
instances? Obviously ARCWN itself could have been
used, but at the risk of it being understood as
Monadic or Well-Known, etc. As it is quite obvious
from my questions, I only can "think" in English so
many of my questions come from how an American in the
21st century looks at things. But it just seems like
having a sure-enough indefinite article would come in
rather handy now and then.
Mitch Larramore
Sugar Land, Texas
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