[b-greek] Re: go AND make

From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Fri Mar 09 2001 - 10:52:55 EST


At 9:10 AM -0800 3/9/01, dixonps@juno.com wrote:
>On Fri, 09 Mar 2001 14:51:26 -0000 "Mark Wilson" <emory2oo2@hotmail.com>
>writes:
>>
>> Matt 28:19a
>>
>> POREUQENTES OUN MAQHTEUSATE PANTA TA EQNH
>>
>> What is the grammatical sense here that leads
>> most translations to add KAI? (I do NOT get the
>> sense myself of two separate instructions.)
>
>King James translators apparently did not appreciate the participial
>nuance of attendant circumstance that modern exegetes recognize. Just
>how or when this appreciation came about is a good question.
>
>Anyhow, an attendant circumstantial participle gives the POREUQENTES the
>same force as the main verb, here the imperatival MAQHTEUSATE.

I rather doubt that the KJV translators were wanting in astuteness to
understand and deal with a simple idiomatic structure such as this. One of
the tricks of translation into English one learns fairly early in the game
is that, where Greek tends subordinate antecedent acts in a sequence by use
of a preceding aorist participle, English prefers coodinated verbs.

Here's an example chosen more or less at random Mk 6:17 AUTOS GAR hO
hHRWiDHS APOSTEILAS EKRATHSEN TON IWANNHN KAI EDHSEN AUTON EN FULAKHi ...
This the KJV renders as " For Herod himself had sent forth and laid hold
upon John, and bound him in prison ... "

Greek simply tends to subordinate verbal notions to what's key or central;
English verbal notions tend to be strung together in "run-on" sentences.
That is, of course, an over-generalization, but I think it's no fundamental
misrepresentation.


--

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics/Washington University
Home: 7222 Colgate Ave./St. Louis, MO 63130/(314) 726-5649
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/

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