Stephen Hughes wrote:Okay, I get that. There is a legacy form that I am not familiar with. Sometimes old forms get thrown in for reasons that are not easy for someone of my limited Greek to see why.
NB. This is about to become a rather complex question, which perhaps wouldn't generally suit a beginners' forum, but I suppose that a difficult passage with a rare form requires a more difficult level of questioning and understanding.
First of all, let's concede that this doesn't belong in the Beginners Forum at all, but in Syntax & Grammar under Language and Linguistics, perhaps with subject-header, "Imperatival infinitive." Would someone with authority and know-how please resettle it?
Stephen Hughes wrote:Do you have any incling as to why that might happen? Why here in the middle of a passage? I get that this is a form and it has a special name and so on, but what is special about this place that makes it fit here? Why not use the imperative form that was used in the previous verse, or the participles that surround our verse? What triggered the use of an archaic form here?.
And secondly, I apologize for my knee-jerk response to your question. I can now look back many years to learning what you're calling "the Old Imperatival Infinitive" in my Sophomore year while reading Homer, and to a class many years later, but still well in my own past, when a physician reading Homer with me encountered this construction and said, "Oh, that's not uncommon even in English -- I've often pointed one of my patients to a chair and said to him, "To sit!" We laughed at that but didn't think further about it. Now, as you've raised the question of what explanation there may be for this usage of the infinitive as an imperative, I realize that it is indeed a serious question.
So I've researched it a little bit further. I couldn't find the reference in Smyth readily yesterday morning, but now I have it at §2013:
2013. Infinitive in Commands.—The infinitive may be used for the second person of the imperative. The person addressed is regarded as the subject. This infinitive is commoner in poetry than in prose (where it has a solemn or formal force).
θαρσῶν νῦν, Διόμηδες, ἐπὶ Τρώεσσι μάχεσθαι with good courage now, Diomed, fight against the Trojans E 124, σὺ δέ, Κλεαρίδᾱ … τᾱ̀ς πύλᾱς ἀνοίξᾱς ἐπεκθεῖν but do you, Clearidas, open the gates and sally forth T. 5. 9.
a. This infinitive may be used in conjunction with an imperative: ἀκούετε λεῴ· κατὰ τὰ πάτρια τοὺς χόας πῑ́νειν hear ye, good people! drink the Pitchers as our sires drank! Ar. Ach. 1000.
b. The infinitive for the third person of the imperative often occurs in legal language (laws, treaties, etc.), and does not necessarily depend on the principal verb. Thus, ἔτη δὲ εἶναι τᾱ̀ς σπονδᾱ̀ς πεντήκοντα and the treaty shall continue for fifty years T. 5. 18. In this construction the infinitive has the force of an infinitive dependent on ἔδοξε (it was voted that) or the like. So in medical language, as πῑ́νειν δὲ ὕδωρ it is well for the patient to drink water Hippocrates 1. 151.
c. The infinitive (with subject accusative) is rarely used for the third person of the imperative when there is an unconscious ellipsis of a word like δός grant, or εὔχομαι I pray. Thus, τεύχεα σῡλήσᾱς φερέτω κοίλᾱς ἐπὶ νῆας, σῶμα δὲ οἴκαδʼ ἐμὸν δόμεναι πάλιν let him strip off my arms and carry them to the hollow ships, but let him give back my body to my home H 78.
d. In negative commands (prohibitions) μή with the infinitive is poetic and Ionic: οἷς μὴ πελάζειν do not approach these (= μὴ πέλαζε) A. Pr. 712, μηδὲ καλεῖν πω ὄλβιον and do not call him happy yet Hdt. 1. 32.
This account in Smyth does point to some associated factors that may apply, e.g. "unconscious ellipsis" of a verb that will be completed with an infinitive. But your question makes it clear that a fuller explanation, if there's one to be had, is called for. A Google search for "imperatival infinitive" brought up a 2010 article by Rutger Allan (of middle-voice distinction) entitled, "The infinitivus pro imperativo in Ancient Greek. The Imperatival Infinitive as an Expression of Proper Procedural Action" in
Mnemosyne, Volume 63, Issue 2, pages 203 – 228. The abstract reads as follows:
In this paper, it is argued that the use of the imperatival infinitive (or, infinitivus pro imperativo) can be explained by means of the notion of procedure. The imperatival infinitive refers to the appropriate action that is to be carried out as part of a practical or conventional social procedure (script, frame) which is evoked in the discourse or by the extra-linguistic situation of the interlocutors. Unlike the imperative proper, the imperatival infinitive does not involve a direct appeal of the speaker to the hearer. As its directive force depends on the appropriateness of the action within a particular procedure, the imperatival infinitive can be seen as a more indirect type of directive expression.
The functional differences between the imperative and the imperatival infinitive can be clarified by reference to the notions of finiteness and grounding. As imperatival infinitives are not finite, they do not invoke the ground (i.e. the speech event, its participants, and its immediate circumstances), but merely designate a type of action which is not epistemically located with respect to time or reality. Unlike the imperative, therefore, the directive force of the imperatival infinitive is not anchored in the ground, but, instead, it is pragmatically implicated by the procedure at hand.
Stephen Hughes wrote:I had half suspected that it would be a second infinitive after the Παρακαλῶ ... ὑμᾶς "I beg of you ..." in Romans 12:1, but it seems so far away from that construction, so I dismissed it. Was that offhanded dismissal valid? Is that sense still current here? Also...
After reading your quote from BDF, I'd also appreciate it if you could critique my understanding of that example of the Old Imperatival Infinitive from Philippians.
Phiippians 3:16 wrote:πλὴν εἰς ὃ ἐφθάσαμεν, τῷ αὐτῷ ⸀στοιχεῖν."
It seems to me that in the SBL type text, there is the possibility that there is a sort of balance here between the εἰς ὃ ἐφθάσαμεν "up to what we have already attained" (NIV) on the one hand and the τῷ αὐτῷ {"to that same much"} (let us live up to (NIV). In this understanding (that the ὃ in the first phrase represents the τῷ αὐτῷ in the second) it seems to me that the Infinitive can sort of gets its potentiality from the first part of the sentence. Is that a true Old Imperatival Infinitive?
I would understand the text as you cite it differently. It seems to me that εἰς ὃ ἐφθάσαμεν has the ring of an idiomatic expression with the sense, "at this point" or "for the present" or "at this station of our journey", and that τῷ αὐτῷ ⸀στοιχεῖν has the ring of another idiomatic expression with the sense, "Keep on keeping on" or "Don't switch horses now" or "Stay the course" or "keep following the rule." You go on to citing the Majority Text with its κάνονι appended to τῷ αὐτῷ στοιχεῖν; my guess is that some scribe added κὰνονι to clarify the sense I've suggested. At any rate, I don't think that τῷ αὐτῷ refers back to the ὃ of ὃ ἐφθάσαμεν, but rather goes with an implicit referent like κάνονι, yielding the sense, "Stick with the rule we've followed thus far" or, more 'literally', "walk by the same (rule that we have observed) up to the point to which we have come."
Stephen Hughes wrote:There is another possibility (that seeming followed by for example the RSV "let us hold true to what we have attained.") where the στοιχεῖν is clearly taken as the Old Imperatival Infinitive that you have brought to light.
In the Majority text of the verse;
Philipians 3:16 RP wrote:πλὴν εἰς ὃ ἐφθάσαμεν, τῷ αὐτῷ στοιχεῖν κανόνι, τὸ ἀυτὸ αὐτὸ φρονεῖν
"Nevertheless, to the degree that we have already attained, let us walk by the same rule, let us be of the same mind." (NKJV) There appears be be no choice but to take both of those infinitives as Old Imperatival Infinitive. The ὃ can't equate with the τῷ αὐτῷ since the τῷ αὐτῷ goes with κανόνι. Is that possible?? Can the demonstrative phrase be interupted by a verb τῷ αὐτῷ
στοιχεῖν κανόνι? ("Walk by the same standard") and clearly τὸ ἀυτὸ αὐτὸ φρονεῖν could also easily be taken as an Old Imperatival Infinitive as your quoted reference suggests.
As far as I understand an infinitive, it has no power to do anything - no expression of person, no expression of number, no expression of aspect - in this case for these first aorist verbs - no expression of time, and no expression of mood (the imperative being a mood) at all in themselves, so they need to rely on their surroundings for everything. Is that a valid way of thinking? What (if we take the SBL text in the sense of an Old Imperatival infinitive and of course in the RP text) is their in their surrounds that could give them that potentiality to get the force needed to make people do things?
What I've said above is as far as I can take it. Perhaps someone can read and tell us more about what Rutger Allan has to say, but it does seem clear that the usage of this imperatival infinitive depends upon a discerned conditioning factor in what precedes its use.