[B-Greek] How Markos reads the LXX (was future indicative in Jonah 1:11 (Joseph Justiss)
Albert Pietersma
albert.pietersma at sympatico.ca
Fri May 20 23:52:21 EDT 2011
Mark,
If you have in mind that we must read the Greek of the LXX in terms
of the Greek language of the period, I couldn't agree more and can
only wish that more scholars (including Septuagint scholars) would do
the same. Though at times one may turn to the source language to
arbitrate between existing senses of Greek words, at no point ought
one superimpose a Hebrew sense on a Greek word simply because Hebrew X
happens to be paired with Greek Y in translation.
Reading Septuagint Greek as Greek means, however, that all the warts
of the Greek must be recognized and acknowledged, rather than being
swept under the carpet. In other words, one takes the Greek seriously
qua GREEK!
So from that perspective let's look at TW DAUID in the Greek Psalter.
There is no question but that TW DAUID is in the Greek Psalter as a
representation of Hebrew LDAUID. Thus the form of the text derives
from the source text, but the semantics are determined by whatever TW
DAUID can mean qua Greek. Can TW DAUID mean that Dauid is indicated
as the author of a given psalm? Clearly not, since, as Smyth notes
(§1488) "The notion of agency does not belong to the dative," even
though Grammars use the phrase "dative of agent" in connection with
verbal adjectives in -TOS and TEOS. As a result, TW DAUID does not
express agency. Furthermore, to superimpose agency on TW DAUID
because its Hebrew counterpart is thought to express agency is clearly
not an option if one takes the Greek seriously qua Greek. In short,
to attempt to calculate "how much of the LXX [one] can describe as
'traditional Greek'" strikes me as being a rather meaningless
undertaking. ALL of it is Greek and means whatever it can mean qua
Greek.
The Jonah passage works the same way as TW DAUID in Psalms. That is to
say, its linguistic form derives from the Hebrew source text but its
semantics are determined by the Greek qua Greek. While its
grammatical form can be described as negative transfer from the source
language, the lexemes used mean whatever they mean qua Greek.
In sum, I whole-heartedly endorse your suggestion of reading the Greek
of the Septuagint qua Greek but at the same time would underscore your
apparent findings, namely, that the Greek of the Septuagint is "a
little odd." If that oddity arises from its mode of translation from
the source language, however, rather than from the spoken language of
Alexandrian Jews, one might well ask to what extent it makes sense to
compile a dictionary or to write a grammar of the Septuagint, given
that both lexicography and grammatography describe conventional usage
of a living language. (I have in mind here Jeremy Spencer's note.)
Al
On May 20, 2011, at 8:17 AM, Mark Lightman wrote:
> John Sanders wrote
>
> <The Greek text needs to stand on its own feet and be understood in
> terms
> of
> Greek.>
>
> Hi, John,
>
> This is one of my ad nauseams, but in this case it has the added
> benefit
> of being true. I want to use this thread as an opportunity to
> elaborate on
> a point I tried (tried!) to make a while back in the
> PSALMOS TWi DAUID thread and how
> I personally, just me, have come to the conclusion that the best way
> to
> read the LXX is to do so independently of the Hebrew (or any other
> (meta)language.)
> This passage from Jonah illustrates nicely that you can take
> most passages
> from the LXX in two ways. Clearly the καὶ κοπάσει (KAI
> KOPASEI)
> is a Semitism. The KAI is not really a Greek KAI, but a rendering
> of the Hebrew
> vov which can introduce a purpose clause. You can argue that you
> cannot
> REALLY understand what is going on in this passage unless you know
> Hebrew.
> And of course, you cannot really know Hebrew unless you know Arabic
> and
> Ugaritic. And these languages cannot be understood unless you deal
> with
> proto-Semitic. And you cannot understand a dead language unless you
> have a firm grounding in the latest (what time is it?) linguistic fad.
>
> But on the other hand, καὶ κοπάσει makes sufficient sense
> in Greek.
> ετοιμαζω το δειπον. και φαγουμαι. This
> really means BASICALLY the same
> thing as ετοιμαζω το δειπνον ινα φαγω. Could
> you find such a simple
> paratactical
> construction in attested Greek? Maybe, maybe not, but no Greek
> could fail
> to understand BASICALLY what LXX Jonah is saying. Albert P. and I
> discussed a while
> back how much of the LXX you could describe as "traditional Greek."
> It turns out
> Dana/Mantey on page 15 give you a number:
>
>
>
> "As a matter of fact, however, the LXX is not as intensely Semitic
> as has formerly been
> supposed. Of eighty-one varieties of grammatical usage
> discussed by Conybeare and
> Stock (Selections from the Septuagint), a careful examination in the
> light of the
> present knowledge of the Koine reveals that fifty-three of them are
> typical Greek, and the
> remaining twenty-eight would likely be considerably reduced by
> further knowledge of the
> Koine. That is, at least sixty-five per cent of
> the Septuagint represents Greek of the age
> in which it was made."
>
> I am not endorsing their number, and anyway, it's silly because,
> based on these
> numbers, you can say that up to 35% of the LXX is NOT traditional
> Greek. I would
> say that the LXX is as Greek as you want to make it. It all depends
> on how you choose
> to look at it. A parallel is the English phrase "and it came to
> pass." You can always look
> at the "and" there as a semitism, again going back to και
> εγενετο and before that to the
> same Hebrew vov. But every English speaker knows what "and it came
> to pass" means.
> Did the phrase exist in English before Tyndale? Maybe, maybe not,
> but the
> King James Bible needs to stand on its own feet and be understood in
> terms of
> the English. Sure, there are a few passages that are
> incomprehensible as English,
> just like there are a few LXX passages where the Greek can
> only be
> made sense of
> by an appeal to the Hebrew, but as a whole, both are translationese
> only if you
> choose to look at them that way.
>
> The real point I want to make is this: A few years ago, I set up a
> goal for myself
> to read through the LXX cover to cover. I've probably read about a
> third of it jumping
> around, but I always struggled with it. I found its Greek for the
> most part insipid.
> And I always wondered about the underlying Hebrew. At one point I
> read through
> Oxford's fantastic Comparative Psalter, where you have the Hebrew
> and literal English
> translations of both the Hebrew and Greek on opposite pages. This
> allows you to
> see if maybe the Hebrew can shed light on what is REALLY going on in
> a given
> passage. It's not a bad way to read the LXX.
>
> But as my Greek has gotten a little better, I find that the best way
> to read
> the LXX is just to read it as Greek. Sure, it's a
> little odd. Homer and Plato it
> ain't. But it makes sense. It is very easy to understand BASICALLY
> what is
> going on, and for me, I find that this is has to be enough. Nothing
> wrong with
> analyzing a passage in terms the underlying original, just like
> there is nothing
> wrong with analyzing a Greek passage in terms of whatever
> metalanguage floats your
> PLOION. But for me, to do this inevitably slows me down, it takes
> me out of the
> Greek I want to learn into something else. This is true when we
> have the Hebrew
> original. How much more so in the case of the NT where isolating
> putative
> semitisms is not so much bad as unnecessary.
>
> John wrote
>
> <The Greek text needs to stand on its own feet and be understood in
> terms
> of
> Greek.>
>
> You see, the Greek text stands where it stands. We are free to
> stand anywhere
> we want when we look at it. If we stand here, we see Aramaisms. If
> we stand
> here where see Latinisms. If we stand here we see a middle force in
> a deponent.
> From over here we see result, from there purpose, here tense, there
> aspect.
> When I read Greek now I hear all these people standing from their
> positions telling
> me to leave the Greek and come stand where they are.
>
>
>
> Mark L
>
> Φωσφορος
>
>
>
> FWSFOROS MARKOS
>
> --- On Thu, 5/19/11, spencerj76 at aol.com <spencerj76 at aol.com> wrote:
>
> From: spencerj76 at aol.com <spencerj76 at aol.com>
> Subject: Re: [B-Greek] future indicative in Jonah 1:11 (Joseph
> Justiss)
> To: b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org
> Date: Thursday, May 19, 2011, 10:15 AM
>
>
> 19 May 2011
>
>
> Friends,
>
> I've checked the Masoretic Text of Jonah 1:11, and it does seem, as
> George indicated, that the expression καὶ κοπάσει (KAI
> KOPASEI) in the Septuagint text of Jonah is mostly an effort to
> translate the Qal imperfect (or jussive) of the the Hebrew verb SH-T-
> Q ("be quiet"). I would think that in this example of translation
> Greek, the translators of the Septuagint are just trying to
> translate the Hebrew tense along with the conjunctive WAW in the
> Hebrew
> text
> (which, as George explained, can be used in many ways). It may be
> worth noting that the translators don't seem to take the Hebrew
> imperfect to have a jussive sense ("that the sea might be....") as
> far as I can tell. Because it's translation Greek, I'm not sure I'd
> draw too many grammatical conclusions with regard to the Greek. As
> to the subjunctive in the sailors' question, that, too, seems like
> the most natural way for the Greeks to translate the Hebrew original
> (a Qal imperfect of the verb "to do").
>
> Best wishes,
> Jeremy Spencer
>
>
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: George F Somsel <gfsomsel at yahoo.com>
> To: Joseph Justiss <jljustiss at gmail.com>; b-greek <b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org
> >
> Sent: Wed, May 18, 2011 6:22 pm
> Subject: Re: [B-Greek] future indicative in Jonah 1:11 (Joseph
> Justiss)
>
>
>
> Jonah 1:11 (GS 12 Proph)
>
> 1 καὶ εἶπαν πρὸς αὐτόν Τί σοι
> ποιήσωμεν, καὶ κοπάσει ἡ θάλασσα ἀφʼ
> ἡμῶν; ὅτι ἡ
> άλασσα ἐπορεύετο καὶ ἐξήγειρε
> μᾶλλον κλύδωνα.
> 11 KAI EIPAN PROS AUTON, "TI SOI POIHSWMEN, KAI KOPASEI hH QALASSA
> AF' hHMWN?"
> OTI hH QALASSA EPOREUETO KAI ECHGEIRE MALLON KLUDWNA.
>
> 'm not sure what your problem with κοπάσει KOPASEI might be,
> but it seems that
> hat we have here is a very literal translation of the MT here (note
> the καί
> AI joining it to the preceeding). I suspect, however, that you are
> questioning
> hy a future is used here. Note that the subj of the aorist is used
> in the
>
> uestion Τί σοι ποιήσωμεν TI POIHSWMEN as might be
> expected in a question
> xpressing uncertainty. In keeping with Semitic practice the current
> clause is
> oined to the preceeding by a copula which has many uses in Hebrew
> including
> xpressing result or purpose. In this case we are looking at a
> purpose clause
> o that the question is asked regarding what must be done SO THAT the
> danger may
> be averted.
> george
> fsomsel
>
> search for truth, hear truth,
> earn truth, love truth, speak the truth, hold the truth,
> efend the truth till death.
>
> Jan Hus
> ________
>
>
> _______________________________
> eek
> ---
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—
Albert Pietersma PhD
21 Cross Street,
Weston ON Canada M9N 2B8
Email: albert.pietersma at sympatico.ca
Homepage: http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~pietersm
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