Mark 10:36 Τί θέλετέ [με] ποιήσω ὑμῖν;

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MAubrey
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Re: Mark 10:36 Τί θέλετέ [με] ποιήσω ὑμῖν;

Post by MAubrey »

Vasile Stancu wrote:Mike, I believe emphasizing things is not limited to employing accent/accented words. Don't you agree that a redundant με could be assumed as an emphasizing instrument?
No. Emphasis via redundancy would appear along with an accented form. In fact when we talk about pronouns, we usually talk about the accented forms as "emphatic" and the clitics as just normal, but the reverse is actually true: the accent forms may or may not be emphatic and the clitic forms are always unemphatic. Always. It's called the deaccenting of given information. Clitics are clitics because they're necessary, but backgrounded information. I also do not consider this particular clitic to be redundant.
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Re: Mark 10:36 Τί θέλετέ [με] ποιήσω ὑμῖν;

Post by Vasile Stancu »

MAubrey wrote: I also do not consider this particular clitic to be redundant.
Μή τι, Mike, ἐὰν λαλήσω ἔτι ἅπαξ· I thought that με was possibly redundant, from the perspective of those who may consider the form Τί θέλετε ποιήσω ὑμῖν correct as well.
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Re: Mark 10:36 Τί θέλετέ [με] ποιήσω ὑμῖν;

Post by MAubrey »

Vasile Stancu wrote:I thought that με was possibly redundant, from the perspective of those who may consider the form Τί θέλετε ποιήσω ὑμῖν correct as well.
Hmm. I see what you're saying. I don't have an answer for that though...
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Jake Horner
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Re: Mark 10:36 Τί θέλετέ [με] ποιήσω ὑμῖν;

Post by Jake Horner »

Is it possible that the writer/scribe was just trying to conform the language of v.36 to v. 35?

Καὶ προσπορεύονται αὐτῷ Ἰάκωβος καὶ Ἰωάννης οἱ υἱοὶ Ζεβεδαίου λέγοντες αὐτῷ·

διδάσκαλε, θέλομεν ἵνα ὃ ἐὰν αἰτήσωμέν σε ποιήσῃς ἡμῖν.
ὁ δὲ εἶπεν αὐτοῖς· τί θέλετέ [με] ποιήσω ὑμῖν;

But it ended up being awkward... an mildly emphatic με and an implied ἵνα perhaps? Hard to say, it is an oddball...

my noob contribution....

jake
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Re: Mark 10:36 Τί θέλετέ [με] ποιήσω ὑμῖν;

Post by MAubrey »

This thread is a little old at this point, but I've come across a useful discussion of this construction (θέλω + V[subjunctive]) that suggests that the reading followed by the NA27 *isn't* ungrammatical.

Τί θέλετέ [με] ποιήσω ὑμῖν;

Theodore Markopoulos' book The Future in Greek: From Ancient to Medieval has a number of discussion of the constructions for Classical Greek, Hellenistic & Roman Greek and Medieval Greek. His book, as a whole, is focused the development and grammaticalization of the various future referring periphrastic constructions (μέλλω+inf, ἔχω+inf, and θέλω+inf). In discussing θέλω he surveys a variety of modal constructions that use the verb, including θέλω+V[subj]. And while the construction is consistently rare, it does indeed occur in Greek from the Classical period through the Medieval period. In the Classical era, it is limited to dialogue. Markopoulos suggests on that basis that it has its history primarily in spoken Greek rather than written Greek. It is used both in situations where there are separate subjects for the dependent and matrix verbs and also where we have subject co-reference between the verb as here. In fact, the latter situation of co-reference is far, far more common in the Hellenistic-Roman period than disjunctive subjects.

So it seems to me that this construction actually *isn't* ungrammatical. It merely cannot be translated *directly* in English (i.e. "literal" translation doesn't work--well, I don't even think it exists).

I can cite some more examples from all historical periods later--I left my copy of Markopoulos at my in-law's house. I should be back over there this afternoon, but I didn't want to forget to write this.
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Re: Mark 10:36 Τί θέλετέ [με] ποιήσω ὑμῖν;

Post by Stephen Carlson »

Thanks, Mike, for that.

Do you know if he discusses the raising of the subject of the dependent verb in such a construction?
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Re: Mark 10:36 Τί θέλετέ [με] ποιήσω ὑμῖν;

Post by MAubrey »

I'll check when I get my copy again...
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Re: Mark 10:36 Τί θέλετέ [με] ποιήσω ὑμῖν;

Post by MAubrey »

I've done some substantial digging, but I don't know if there's any resolution. If anything, the digging has changed my mind 100% about the acceptability of the clause. I think the NA27 text is perfectly grammatical now.

I've written it up on my blog, I thought it was a little too long for a forum post:

ΘΕΛΩ + Subjunctive in Mark 10:36
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Re: Mark 10:36 Τί θέλετέ [με] ποιήσω ὑμῖν;

Post by Stephen Carlson »

MAubrey wrote:I think the NA27 text is perfectly grammatical now.
For what it's worth, I've come to the same conclusion.
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jonathan.borland
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Re: Mark 10:36 Τί θέλετέ [με] ποιήσω ὑμῖν;

Post by jonathan.borland »

Dear Fellow B-Greekers,

I've read this thread with interest, and also Mike Aubrey's insightful blog posts, but still don't remember seeing any good examples that would negate Güting's statement, that "με ist in den Varianten, die ποιησω haben, ungrammatisch" (Heinrich Greeven, Textkritik des Markusevangeliums [ed. Eberhard W. Güting; Münster: LIT Verlag, 2005], 521). Are we saying (or surmising) that με is an ungrammatical slang that Mark chose to use? It's interesting to see so many conjectures on what the με means in this construction, especially if με ποιησω is, as Greeven reasoned (520), merely a halfhearted correction that betrays that the scribe knew the reading με ποιησαι.

Jonathan C. Borland
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