Matt 25:39 πρός σε

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Stephen Carlson
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Matt 25:39 πρός σε

Post by Stephen Carlson »

Matthew 25:39 reads: πότε δέ σε εἴδομεν ἀσθενοῦντα ἢ ἐν φθλακῇ καὶ ἤλθομεν πρός σε; ("But did we then see you sick or in jail and come to you?)

I'm wondering about the accentuation of the last word. I thought when used as the object of a preposition, σέ should be orthotonic and accented like πρός σέ, but NA27, UBS4, Hodges and Farstad, von Soden, Westcott and Hort, and even Tischendorf accent σε as if it is enclitic.

So what am I missing?

Stephen
Stephen C. Carlson, Ph.D.
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Tony Pope
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Re: Matt 25:39 πρός σε

Post by Tony Pope »

Apparently it's πρός that is the odd one out, at least in many MSS, and so this has led editors to write πρός σε etc. According to a footnote in Winer, Tischendorf in his 7th ed. wrote πρὸς μέ, σέ etc, but in the 8th ed he retained the accent on the pronoun in such cases only when the pronoun is emphatic.

G B Winer, A treatise on the grammar of New Testament Greek, pp. 62f. (Can be found on Google books).

See also, more briefly, BDF §279.
Stephen Carlson
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Re: Matt 25:39 πρός σε

Post by Stephen Carlson »

That could be the explanation for Matt 25:39 (thanks for the cite to BDF!). The puzzle remains for me, however, that all the 17 other occurrences of πρὸς σέ in UBS2 (which TLG searches) have the orthotonic σέ (e.g. Matt 28:18, Mark 9:17, Luke 1:19)?

(Interestingly, UBS2 at Matt 14:28 read πρὸς σὲ ἐπὶ τὰ ὕδατα, but in UBS4 and NA27 it is now πρὸς σε ἐπὶ τὰ ὕδατα.)

Stephen
Stephen C. Carlson, Ph.D.
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MAubrey
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Re: Matt 25:39 πρός σε

Post by MAubrey »

sccarlson wrote:That could be the explanation for Matt 25:39 (thanks for the cite to BDF!). The puzzle remains for me, however, that all the 17 other occurrences of πρὸς σέ in UBS2 (which TLG searches) have the orthotonic σέ (e.g. Matt 28:18, Mark 9:17, Luke 1:19)?

(Interestingly, UBS2 at Matt 14:28 read πρὸς σὲ ἐπὶ τὰ ὕδατα, but in UBS4 and NA27 it is now πρὸς σε ἐπὶ τὰ ὕδατα.)

Stephen
Προς is indeed the odd man out here:
A. T. Robertson, 682 wrote:With prepositions (the “true” ones) the long form is used as in ancient Greek except with πρός, which uniformly has με even where emphasis is obvious.
However, if you look at the papyri, you will see that things were changing. Gignac notes that eventually even πρός began to take primarily orthotonic pronouns or more clearly, since accents were so rare--disyllabic 1st person pronouns.
Mike Aubrey, Linguist
SIL International
Koine-Greek.com
Stephen Carlson
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Re: Matt 25:39 πρός σε

Post by Stephen Carlson »

I'm beginning to suspect that the accent differences in this case are due to the inconsistent application of editorial policy.
Stephen C. Carlson, Ph.D.
Melbourne, Australia
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