cwconrad wrote:But on the other hand, this collocation of words seems unnatural to me (to be sure, I don't have all that much confidence in my sensibility here); for the sense that we are assuming here, it seems to me that something like ... ὅτι ὁ πρὶν διώκων ἡμἀς νῦν εὐαγγελίζεται ... or ... ὅτι ὁ πρότερον διώκων ἡμἀς νῦν εὐαγγελίζεται ...
For this construction with the "natural" feel - putting the ποτέ with the noun which then goes with the verb is another usage of ποτέ is something that Stephen Carlson has previously differentiated in this discussion saying something to the effect that it can either refer to the whole phrase or just to one of the participants in the phrase.
Examples of ποτέ in a nominal phrase are things like
John 9:13 RP wrote:Ἄγουσιν αὐτὸν πρὸς τοὺς Φαρισαίους, τόν ποτε τυφλόν.
"They brought the one who had previously been blind to the Pharisites, this guy in our story" or
Ephesians 2:13 RP wrote:οἱ ποτὲ ὄντες μακρὰν ἐγγὺς ἐγενήθητε
"You who had at one time were
at a distance have become
near". Personally, I don't see much of a difference between these two situations, but one has been treated as enclitic and the other as oxytone.
There are some classical examples which I think match Stephen Carlson criterion for ποτέ, but all of them seem to be accented oxytone (except where the final έ) has ellided. They are set out on pages 876 - 879 of
Volume 2 of Fragmenta comicae dictionis. (BTW.
Volume 1 is here. I guess that that is a choice of the editor of the copendium rather than the orignial editors.
A discussion of what enclitics are can be found at
dramata.com and from section 181ff in Smyth, if anyone wants to familarise themselves with them. Smyth's discussion has a logical slight of hand which I don't like in his discussion of the barytone, because he considers that the barytone is the non-existence of an accent and therefore it doesn't exist. (That is, IMHO, like saying because "zero" describes non-existence it itself also doesn't exist. That is perhaps a step backwards in understanding).
I had a look through this topic from various aspects before I initially replied to Stephen Carlson's and one thing that I did find was
inconsitency. I think is that if there is a rule to this, then it would be better to be applied to the published texts (after suitable peer review and scholarly evaluation). I also think that if this insight of his is sound, it could be extended to other (disyllabic) enclitics and a proposal for texual emmendations be put forward. I think that despite a few minor errors here, Stephen Carlson has a good and valid point, which perhaps we could help him work with and develop for the good of New Testament studies. Perhaps someone with your experience and wisdom could ask him some better-guided and less-ignorant questions than I have done. I feel tha there is still room to develop whether his initial conditions the the header post are either/or conditions or both conditions, the interplay of other elements in the sentence and other factors too.