[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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