OU MH + Aorist Subj Ever NOT Emphatic?
Posted: July 29th, 2016, 8:37 am
Hi all:
I’ve been a very amateur student of Greek for a while now, and stumbled upon something that has challenged my long-held beliefs regarding OU MH + aorist subjunctive = emphatic negation. (Note…I am NOT a college student working on a dissertation—I’m just a curious academic librarian working on this stuff for my own enjoyment!).
I’ve always understood this double negative/emphatic negation to just be a fact, period (BDAG, Wallace, numerous others). However, I recently read an old (late 1800s) article by W. G. Ballantine in The American Journal of Philology. In this article (“Negative Futures in the Greek New Testament”), Ballantine puts forth a view that OU MH + aorist subj is (contrary to all I’ve heard) NOT emphatic. He claims this for several reasons, including the fact that OU and OU MH were apparently used interchangeably in the LXX (he gives a couple of examples from Isaiah). I believe Zerwick has noted this indiscriminate usage but still reached a different conclusion than Ballantine.
Ballantine also argues that OU MH is used in a majority of NT predictions, which is, in his view, inexplicable if this is to be taken as emphatic (I’m not convinced by this), and claims that many of these uses seem rather arbitrary, as well. Moulton quotes Ballantine and seems to agree that “it is not natural for a form of special emphasis to be used in the majority of places…” but eventually concludes that this use of OU MH is reserved for divine sayings.
My knee-jerk reaction is that Ballantine has failed to take into account the fact that this usage is so restricted in the NT that it seems to be almost entirely used in sayings of Jesus. That seems very significant to me. However, his points make me call into question my own beliefs regarding OU MH and aorist subj. Is Ballantine’s a fringe view, or has this really been a matter of debate that I’ve just missed? Is there any way to rule out his view that OU MH + aor subj was, at that point in time, not meant by the NT writers to be taken as emphatic? I still believe that if this were as common of a use as Ballantine claimed, it would appear in other places besides primarily the sayings of Jesus, but there are so many factors to consider that it is difficult to work through everything.
I’ve been a very amateur student of Greek for a while now, and stumbled upon something that has challenged my long-held beliefs regarding OU MH + aorist subjunctive = emphatic negation. (Note…I am NOT a college student working on a dissertation—I’m just a curious academic librarian working on this stuff for my own enjoyment!).
I’ve always understood this double negative/emphatic negation to just be a fact, period (BDAG, Wallace, numerous others). However, I recently read an old (late 1800s) article by W. G. Ballantine in The American Journal of Philology. In this article (“Negative Futures in the Greek New Testament”), Ballantine puts forth a view that OU MH + aorist subj is (contrary to all I’ve heard) NOT emphatic. He claims this for several reasons, including the fact that OU and OU MH were apparently used interchangeably in the LXX (he gives a couple of examples from Isaiah). I believe Zerwick has noted this indiscriminate usage but still reached a different conclusion than Ballantine.
Ballantine also argues that OU MH is used in a majority of NT predictions, which is, in his view, inexplicable if this is to be taken as emphatic (I’m not convinced by this), and claims that many of these uses seem rather arbitrary, as well. Moulton quotes Ballantine and seems to agree that “it is not natural for a form of special emphasis to be used in the majority of places…” but eventually concludes that this use of OU MH is reserved for divine sayings.
My knee-jerk reaction is that Ballantine has failed to take into account the fact that this usage is so restricted in the NT that it seems to be almost entirely used in sayings of Jesus. That seems very significant to me. However, his points make me call into question my own beliefs regarding OU MH and aorist subj. Is Ballantine’s a fringe view, or has this really been a matter of debate that I’ve just missed? Is there any way to rule out his view that OU MH + aor subj was, at that point in time, not meant by the NT writers to be taken as emphatic? I still believe that if this were as common of a use as Ballantine claimed, it would appear in other places besides primarily the sayings of Jesus, but there are so many factors to consider that it is difficult to work through everything.