Re: Matt 27:53 ".. they went into the holy city"

From: Edgar M. Krentz (emkrentz@mcs.com)
Date: Wed Jul 16 1997 - 21:03:03 EDT


Jonathon wrote:

>I think that the Greek is quite unambiguous about this: the ones who arose
>from the dead are the same ones who went into the holy city. The verb that
>the KJV translates "came out" is a participle, and the main verb associated
>with this participle is "went into". Let me try a hyper-literal translation:
>
SNIP
>
>It was definitely the resurrected saints who did this. A few interesting
>points of the Greek: (1) "Arose" is another one of those medio-passive verbs
>- Gramcord markes it as passive "were raised", but it also appears in other
>contexts with middle force, e.g. where Jesus rose from the table. Either
>would make sense, but I think that the middle sense is more likely,
>following Carl's guidelines for interpretation of medio-passives. (2)
>"Appeared" seems like another medio-passive verb - it is also marked as
>passive in my Gramcord database "were revealed", but I also interpret this
>one as middle.

This is a case where Greek syntax can take you only a little way into the
thought of the writer. Rather intertextual interpretation aids in
supporting what you derived from the Greek text.

Each of the four Gospels describes the actual death of Jesus with different
phraseology. Matt 27:50 uses the phrase AFhHKEN TO PNEUMA.

I would argue, following the suggestion in the margin of Aland, that
Matthew interprets the death of Jesus as the beginning of the fulfillment
of Ezekiel 37. There breath goes out and dead come to life. Thus Matthew
indicates his understanding of the significance of Jesus' death.

I write this only because (1) it supports your interpretation, and (2) it
illustrates the fact that linguistic-grammatical interpretation can go only
so far. One must use other data from an author's work to support the
linguistic suggestion--in this case an understanding of Matthean use of the
OT.

This has probably transgressed a bit the ground rules for b-greek; I only
venture it to make clear the limits of what we are doing on b-greek--on
which I have been lurking lately, not contributing much. That is because I
normally open the material in the evening, after people like Jeffrey, Carl,
and others have already gotten into the discussion with much of what I
might have to contribute.

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