[B-Greek] It will be done

Carl Conrad cwconrad2 at mac.com
Wed Jun 2 08:01:17 EDT 2010


On Jun 2, 2010, at 3:10 AM, John Sanders wrote:
> I apologize, catching up on mail.
> 
> 
> On May 20, 2010, at 11:45 AM, Steve Miller wrote:
> 
> 
> 
>> I'm very new at Greek, and I've been wrestling with GENHQHTW for a few
> 
> 
> 
>> days now. BDAG lists this as an imperative of GINOMAI. Fair enough. But
> 
>> the imperative doesn't really come across in any of the English
> 
>> translations I've looked at. I would have expected something more like
> 
>> "You believe, so be healed." Searching more, BDAG has an entry that
> 
>> specifically addresses this verse (bottom of p.197, under sense 4): "w.
> 
>> adv. or adv. phrase added.../according to your faith let it be done to
> 
>> you/, i.e. /you believe, and you won't be disappointed./ The phrase
> 
>> "won't be disappointed" was completely unexpected. Can anyone shed some
> 
>> light on this?
> 
> 
> 
> Matt. 9:29 τότε ἥψατο τῶν ὀφθαλμῶν αὐτῶν λέγων· κατὰ τὴν πίστιν ὑμῶν
> γενηθήτω ὑμῖν.
> 
> 
> 
> Matt. 9:29 TOTE hHYATO TWN OFQALMWN AUTWN LEGWN· KATA THN PISTIN hUMWN
> GENHQHTW hUMIN.
> 
> 
> 
> The third person imperative would have been more intelligible to native
> English speakers in past centuries when the language was still under the
> pervasive influence of the standard English bible. We don't talk that way
> today.
> 
> 
> 
> I am not sure about this but it seems like the third person imperative here
> is functioning as a performative. In other words, by speaking the words
> Jesus is healing the man. The narrative implies that Jesus has the authority
> to speak the words and affect a healing. I don't think the touching here is
> anything more than symbolic.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Elizabeth Kline
> 
> [JFS]
> Elizabeth has answered well, but if I may, I would like to add just a wee
> bit of commentary.  It has been said on this list that outside reading
> improves one's Greek.  Well, I will let it be tested with my outside
> reading.  I use Euclid as my source of reading for this demonstration
> because Euclid uses the third person imperative often, although much of that
> offen-ness is repetitive.
> 
> For my own purposes I break down the parts of a command (command, request,
> etc., I will just lable as command) into four:  source, agent, command,
> complement or recipient of the command.
> 
> For the second person imperative (I will use an English example):
> 
> You will go to school.
> 
> The source may be unidentified.  If it is identified, it is not emphasized.
> In this example, the source may be your mother, the law, or even yourself as
> you look at your reflection in the mirror.
> 
> The agent in the second person is you, either singular or plural.
> 
> The complement is "to school".  If mentioned, it is usually in an oblique
> case.
> 
> To my mind, the imperative marks "agency", or the "lack of agency" on the
> part of the agent.
> 
> Moving to the third person imperative, Greek marks this with the imperative
> mood, English does not mark it with a separate mood.
> 
> So, going back to Texas, I turn on the telly and I hear that the AG is
> saying, "he will be executed tomorrow".  Here, the source is not spedified
> (but I would assume it is the law), the agent is not specified (but I
> presume it is the State).  The command is specified and so is the complement
> or recipient of the command-here and quite often so it is the subject or
> topic of the phrase.
> 
> If this was in the second person, I would expect something such as "You will
> execute him tomorrow".
> 
> So, given that as the basis of my analysis, let me attempt to answer your
> question.  I presume you are not asking for some psycho-analytical answer,
> but one that is rooted in the difference in Greek and English grammar.
> 
> As Elizabeth wrote, we do not talk that way (that is, we do not
> mark commands in the third person).  Therefore to convey the idea in English
> of the Greek third person imperative, we need some device in English to give
> us that effect.  Before, it was often the word "let" preceeding the phrase.
> "Let him be executed tomorrow".  For us today it almost sounds as if it was
> a request for permission to do the command.
> 
> Anyway, it would appear to me that the phrase " won't be disappointed" is a
> clumsy way of indicating that the command is not one of "free agency" by the
> agent, but is one of command (either by force or by obligation) and that the
> agent in this case, by conforming to the command, will see the benefits.
> 
> Anyway, that is my clumsy way of trying to say that since English does not
> mark third person imperatives, if one wishes to mark it in an English gloss,
> they must do so by means of adding something in context that hopefully will
> indicate said third person imperative.

I really applaud John's way of responding to this not infrequently recurring question
of third-person imperatives. Personally I never had problems with the "let him
do xxx" formulation. It's what Biblical Greek was doing already with AFES and
an infinitive:

Matt. 8:22 ὁ δὲ Ἰησοῦς λέγει αὐτῷ· ἀκολούθει μοι καὶ ἄφες τοὺς νεκροὺς θάψαι τοὺς ἑαυτῶν νεκρούς. 
[O DE IHSOUS LEGEI AUTWi· AKOLOUQEI MOI KAI AFES TOUS NEKROUS QAYAI TOUS hEAUTWN NEKROUS. ]

It's what German does, even John Kennedy's "Lass sie nach Berlin kommen."
And I never imagined that the verb phrase meant that we're giving somebody permission
to act in a certain way.

But what I really appreciate is John's recurrent procedure with grammatical questions --
ignoring traditional grammatical explanations but rather thinking through the item of
usage and devising a workable explanation of how the construction functions. I think that's
how all of the traditional grammar was developed originally, but at some point those
old explanations got stowed in a textbook and people stopped thinking about better
explanations. Until Saussure and the modern linguists decided to ditch all the old grammar
and invent a new metalanguage (which only they could speak) to describe and explain
how language works.

What we need more of, in my opinion, is the kind of fresh thinking about grammatical issues
that we see here. Of course it's hit and miss -- but what's of value is thinking about how the
language works in instances where the traditional grammar doesn't offer an adequate 
explanation. The better linguists, of course, know how to speak to us about these questions
in our own language rather than in unknown tongues.


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






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