[B-Greek] Tranlsating the Imperative: John 4:7

Mark Lightman lightmanmark at yahoo.com
Thu Apr 7 08:22:40 EDT 2011


Hi, Stephen,

One of my all time favorite imperatives is Archimedes:

δός μοι ποῦ στῶ και κινήσω τὴν γῆν.
DOS MOI POU STW KAI KINHSW THN GHN.

He's not literally asking for a place to stand.  It's really a future 
more-or-less vivid condition:  "If I had a place to stand, I would move the 
world."  The imperative is not a request, polite or otherwise, but is a 
rhetorical devise to involve the hearer more vividly in the absurdity of the 
proposition.  Wallace would call it the protastic pseudo-imperative.

We do it in English.  "Give this guy fourteen runs and he is tough to beat."

 Mark L
Φωσφορος


FWSFOROS MARKOS




________________________________
From: Stephen Baldwin <stbaldwi at hotmail.com>
To: B- Greek <b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Wed, April 6, 2011 9:03:52 PM
Subject: [B-Greek] Tranlsating the Imperative: John 4:7


Ladies and Gentlemen:

e.g.
NASB: 7There came a woman of Samaria to draw water. Jesus said to her, "Give Me 
a drink."
NIV:  7 When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you 
give me a drink?”
Greek: DOS MOI PEIN

Whilst the essence of the sentence remains the same, [Jesus asks for a drink], 
the way in which Jesus asks, transmits quite a different tone between the 
translations, at least to the English reader. The text is the same -- there 
appear to be no variants. It is a straightforward aorist imperative.

None of my commentaries deal with this point.
BDF (SS387) says that the imperative is not confined to commands but also 
requests/concessions
Smyth (SS1835a) says something similar. 
Both fail to help me [much] in identifying the different flavours.

AT Robertson [yes Mr. FWS -- he was promoted to Greek work due to the lack of 
tornados, and another desperate attempt to get my  money's worth from my 
purchase ;-)] page 947[c] is slightly more helpful but not a lot.
I almost forgot Wallace (until about to SEND this email) who is the most useful 
and who acknowledges the problem. Page 488 he says how difficult it is to 
communicate tone in a written language. He gives the impression of trying to 
categorise ever so neatly the different uses -- but I'm not sure he succeeds 
entirely.

So the question is, how does one identify correctly, the tone of an occurrence 
of the imperative? Indeed: Is it even possible?
Does the verb form [aorist in this case] play a role? Is it simply a question of 
context? I got to wonder whether the response of the woman gives a clue. She 
uses AITEW [PWS...EMOU...AITEIS] but this can take a soft [ask] or a stern 
[demand] meaning...the context of the conversation as a whole implies a request 
rather than a somewhat brusque command...

What would be the "normal" polite way of asking for  something? I believe that 
in several modern European languages, a simple imperative carries with it no 
negative tonal connotations when asking for something...same for NT Greek?

I'd be interested in your views...

Paschal greetings to you all...

Steve

Stephen Baldwin
stbaldwi at hotmail.com

                          
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