Mt 12:4 Construction of the relative ὃ

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cwconrad
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Mt 12:4 Construction of the relative ὃ

Post by cwconrad »

Mt 12:3-4
ὁ δὲ εἶπεν αὐτοῖς· οὐκ ἀνέγνωτε τί ἐποίησεν Δαυὶδ ὅτε ἐπείνασεν καὶ οἱ μετ᾿ αὐτοῦ, 4 πῶς εἰσῆλθεν εἰς τὸν οἶκον τοῦ θεοῦ καὶ τοὺς ἄρτους τῆς προθέσεως ἔφαγον, οὐκ ἐξὸν ἦν αὐτῷ φαγεῖν οὐδὲ τοῖς μετ᾿ αὐτοῦ εἰ μὴ τοῖς ἱερεῦσιν μόνοις;
How are we to understand the relative pronoun in verse 4? It would appear to be nom. sg. neuter and subject of οὐκ ἐξὸν ἦν αὐτῷ φαγεῖν οὐδὲ τοῖς μετ᾿ αὐτοῦ εἰ μὴ τοῖς ἱερεῦσιν μόνοις -- but why the neuter singular? Could it be accusative of specification, as, for example, "with regard to which action it wasn't permissible for him to eat (it) nor for those ... " Or is there a Semitism involved here?

For comparison's sake, the parallels in Mark and Luke have οὓς in this position, clearly referring back to the loaves as antecedent:
Mk 2:26 πῶς εἰσῆλθεν εἰς τὸν οἶκον τοῦ θεοῦ ἐπὶ Ἀβιαθὰρ ἀρχιερέως καὶ τοὺς ἄρτους τῆς προθέσεως ἔφαγεν, οὓς οὐκ ἔξεστιν φαγεῖν εἰ μὴ τοὺς ἱερεῖς, καὶ ἔδωκεν καὶ τοῖς σὺν αὐτῷ οὖσιν;
Lk 6:4 [ὡς] εἰσῆλθεν εἰς τὸν οἶκον τοῦ θεοῦ καὶ τοὺς ἄρτους τῆς προθέσεως λαβὼν ἔφαγεν καὶ ἔδωκεν τοῖς μετ᾿ αὐτοῦ, οὓς οὐκ ἔξεστιν φαγεῖν εἰ μὴ μόνους τοὺς ἱερεῖς;
This is one of those not so rare instances of a text whose meaning is perfectly clear but whose syntax is not so clear. Any suggestions?
οὔτοι ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς πάντα θεοὶ θνητοῖς ὑπέδειξαν,
ἀλλὰ χρόνῳ ζητέοντες ἐφευρίσκουσιν ἄμεινον. (Xenophanes, Fragment 16)

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
Stephen Hughes
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Re: Mt 12:4 Construction of the relative ὃ

Post by Stephen Hughes »

cwconrad wrote:How are we to understand the relative pronoun ὃ in verse 4?
Perhaps as a translation of דִי the (Biblical) Aramaic relative pronoun (Page 25, Section 35 of A Grammar of Biblical Aramaic By Franz Rosenthal). Then the question is why it was rendered into Greek in the neuter singular?

To answer that, perhaps we could consider that there are two distinct uses for πῶς (1) as a word marking the start of a question (not in this case) and (2) as a way of marking a whole idea expressed by a verb for consideration (which seems to be the intended useage here). Why was that?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems possible that the πῶς εἰσῆλθεν was used to represent a Hebrew infinite construct form (or a similar Aramaic form) "David's entering" after don't the οὐκ ἀνέγνωτε "Don't be ignorant of ... ", in a similar way to the way that the לֶכְתְּךָ֔ "your walking" of Deuteronomy 2:7 was rendered as πῶς διῆλθες "how you walked through" (with the διά added because going through would be the sensible / expected thing to do in a desert).

If the person rendering the story into Greek was considering how to relate the relative to the previous part of the verse, and he was thinking that the action was expressed nominally, it may be that he so rendered the indeclinable relative pronoun as neuter singular to relate to the action of coming in and eating.

The other varient rendering in Mark and Luke may have either "corrected" the Greek to agree - in a way that is good Greek - with τοὺς ἄρτους τῆς προθέσεως, which is the last element of the sentence (closest to the relative) and most likely to be agreed with [the hand of a redactor] or when they were rendered into Greek, the conversion to a verb πῶς εἰσῆλθεν / [ὡς] εἰσῆλθεν was complete and then he moved on to the next element of the sentence [the work of a word-by-word or small-phrase-by-small-phrase translator].

Personally I favour the redactor sprucing up the Greek theory.
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
Stephen Hughes
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Re: Mt 12:4 Construction of the relative ὃ

Post by Stephen Hughes »

CWConrad Thread name wrote:Mt 12:4 Construction of the relative ὃ
Can we be sure it shouldn't have been accented as the masculine singular definite article referring back to David in a mismash of bad Semitic Greek picking him up with the with the
Mt 12:4 with SGH's conjectured ὁ for ὃ wrote:Δαυὶδ ... ὁ οὐκ ἐξὸν ἦν αὐτῷ φαγεῖν
"David ... he it was not fitting to him to eat"?
That is the sort of English that I hear from peoples from the Middle East whose L1 is semitic and has these sort of constructions natively. Of course it would have been best understood by a Greek speaker as the relative ὅ.
[cf. CSB's current thread]
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
David Lim
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Re: Mt 12:4 Construction of the relative ὃ

Post by David Lim »

cwconrad wrote:Mt 12:3-4
ὁ δὲ εἶπεν αὐτοῖς· οὐκ ἀνέγνωτε τί ἐποίησεν Δαυὶδ ὅτε ἐπείνασεν καὶ οἱ μετ᾿ αὐτοῦ, 4 πῶς εἰσῆλθεν εἰς τὸν οἶκον τοῦ θεοῦ καὶ τοὺς ἄρτους τῆς προθέσεως ἔφαγον, οὐκ ἐξὸν ἦν αὐτῷ φαγεῖν οὐδὲ τοῖς μετ᾿ αὐτοῦ εἰ μὴ τοῖς ἱερεῦσιν μόνοις;
How are we to understand the relative pronoun in verse 4? It would appear to be nom. sg. neuter and subject of οὐκ ἐξὸν ἦν αὐτῷ φαγεῖν οὐδὲ τοῖς μετ᾿ αὐτοῦ εἰ μὴ τοῖς ἱερεῦσιν μόνοις -- but why the neuter singular? Could it be accusative of specification, as, for example, "with regard to which action it wasn't permissible for him to eat (it) nor for those ... " Or is there a Semitism involved here?
I think the "ο" here is just functioning as an indefinite relative pronoun (as the subject of "ουκ εξον ην ...") that is put in apposition to "τους αρτους ..."? In English: "ate the bread loaves of the display, that which was not permissible for him to eat, ...". However I note that the Codex Sinaiticus and the Byzantine manuscripts have "ους" instead.
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Stephen Hughes
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Re: Mt 12:4 Construction of the relative ὃ

Post by Stephen Hughes »

David Lim wrote:indefinite relative pronoun
Sorry to cut in, but could you explain this category of pronoun. I'm not familiar with it. Is it something like ὅ,τι?
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
cwconrad
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Re: Mt 12:4 Construction of the relative ὃ

Post by cwconrad »

Stephen Hughes wrote:
David Lim wrote:indefinite relative pronoun
Sorry to cut in, but could you explain this category of pronoun. I'm not familiar with it. Is it something like ὅ,τι?
Is it a newly-koinéed term? ;)
οὔτοι ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς πάντα θεοὶ θνητοῖς ὑπέδειξαν,
ἀλλὰ χρόνῳ ζητέοντες ἐφευρίσκουσιν ἄμεινον. (Xenophanes, Fragment 16)

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
David Lim
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Re: Mt 12:4 Construction of the relative ὃ

Post by David Lim »

Stephen Hughes wrote:
David Lim wrote:indefinite relative pronoun
Sorry to cut in, but could you explain this category of pronoun. I'm not familiar with it. Is it something like ὅ,τι?
It's the same category in which you find the English "that which" and more commonly "What you are holding is mine.". "οστις" (and the "οτι" that derives from it) is also in this category (1 John 1:2), but the more common indefinite relative pronoun used is the relative pronoun itself (Mark 10:9, 13:37, 1 John 1:1,3). Note that Mark 10:9 also uses "ο" for a 'compound' entity.
cwconrad wrote:
Stephen Hughes wrote:
David Lim wrote:indefinite relative pronoun
Sorry to cut in, but could you explain this category of pronoun. I'm not familiar with it. Is it something like ὅ,τι?
Is it a newly-koinéed term? ;)
Alas, it's not a newly-κοινεd term that I can call mine own. It is mentioned at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pronoun for example.
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Stephen Hughes
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Re: Mt 12:4 Construction of the relative ὃ

Post by Stephen Hughes »

David Lim wrote:Alas, it's not a newly-κοινεd term that I can call mine own. It is mentioned at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pronoun for example.
I looked at that article too, and couldn't find it in reference to Greek.
David Lim wrote:"What you are holding is mine."
(having no particular reference) and
I think the "ο" here is just functioning as an indefinite relative pronoun (as the subject of "ουκ εξον ην ...") that is put in apposition to "τους αρτους ..."?
seem somewhat mutually exclusive.
  • "Indefinite" - having no reference in the sentence and
    "In apposition to" - having a reference in the sentence
I understood where you were going with this, and the question still remains; Is there a way that you have conceived of to reconcile these two definitional antitheses? And to be convincing, you will have to explain how a neuter singular accusative and a masculine plural accusative would be in apposition to each other - the two things that we see (sentence position and shared accusativeness) are not enough. This is an infectional language where things have to agree to the linguistically most possible degree (with a few well-known exceptions - neuter plural with singular verbs) and in which lanugage accusative singulars (and plurals) tend to be treated as adverbs.
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
David Lim
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Re: Mt 12:4 Construction of the relative ὃ

Post by David Lim »

Stephen Hughes wrote:
David Lim wrote:Alas, it's not a newly-κοινεd term that I can call mine own. It is mentioned at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pronoun for example.
I looked at that article too, and couldn't find it in reference to Greek.
I don't really care whether a term is used in reference to Greek or not, as long as it is appropriate. But anyway, a simple Google search returns as the first result http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~ancgreek/ ... html#par34.
Stephen Hughes wrote:
David Lim wrote:"What you are holding is mine."
(having no particular reference) and
I think the "ο" here is just functioning as an indefinite relative pronoun (as the subject of "ουκ εξον ην ...") that is put in apposition to "τους αρτους ..."?
seem somewhat mutually exclusive.
  • "Indefinite" - having no reference in the sentence and
    "In apposition to" - having a reference in the sentence
I understood where you were going with this, and the question still remains; Is there a way that you have conceived of to reconcile these two definitional antitheses? And to be convincing, you will have to explain how a neuter singular accusative and a masculine plural accusative would be in apposition to each other - the two things that we see (sentence position and shared accusativeness) are not enough. This is an infectional language where things have to agree to the linguistically most possible degree (with a few well-known exceptions - neuter plural with singular verbs) and in which lanugage accusative singulars (and plurals) tend to be treated as adverbs.
You got the meaning of "indefinite relative pronoun" wrong. It does not mean that it has no reference in the sentence. If you looked at the example of "οστις" that I gave earlier, you can see that "ητις ..." is in apposition to "την ζωην ...", but is called an indefinite relative pronoun. I don't know how the name "indefinite relative pronoun" came about, but if you want my own idiosyncratic explanation of its precise meaning: It creates an indefinite (unspecified) entity X, takes a phrase P of the same type that a relative pronoun takes (where P captures X as the missing part), and returns a noun phrase referring to X. This noun phrase can then be put in apposition to another noun phrase, just as in the example I gave.
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Re: Mt 12:4 Construction of the relative ὃ

Post by cwconrad »

David Lim wrote:indefinite relative pronoun ...
It's the same category in which you find the English "that which" and more commonly "What you are holding is mine.". "οστις" (and the "οτι" that derives from it) is also in this category (1 John 1:2), but the more common indefinite relative pronoun used is the relative pronoun itself (Mark 10:9, 13:37, 1 John 1:1,3). Note that Mark 10:9 also uses "ο" for a 'compound' entity.
All of these are really different, I think, from the ὃ of Mt 12:4.
πῶς εἰσῆλθεν εἰς τὸν οἶκον τοῦ θεοῦ καὶ τοὺς ἄρτους τῆς προθέσεως ἔφαγον, οὐκ ἐξὸν ἦν αὐτῷ φαγεῖν οὐδὲ τοῖς μετ᾿ αὐτοῦ εἰ μὴ τοῖς ἱερεῦσιν μόνοις;
ὃ would mean "which thing" -- but the neuter seems strange here. Certainly the οὓς of Mk and Lk are far less jarring.

I too toyed with the thought that the ὃ of Mt 12:4 if functioning like the "what" of English "I know what you're saying" or even more likely like the quod of Latin that is a neuter sg. acc. pronoun introducing a topic to be discussed, in the sense, "As for the fact that ..." "Regarding the assertion that ... " On the other hand, it looks to me more like the construction of the Hebrew relative pronoun asher introducing a relative clause but still requiring pronominal reference to the antecedent, αὐτῷ in Mt 12:4. Cf. LXX Gen.1:12 Gen 1:12 καὶ ἐξήνεγκεν ἡ γῆ … ξύλον κάρπιμον ποιοῦν καρπόν, οὗ τὸ σπέρμα αὐτοῦ ἐν αὐτῷ κατὰ γένος ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς. In Rom 12:4 the ὃ would refer back to τοὺς ἄρτους τῆς προθέσεως but that would ordinarily be repeated in something like αὐτοὺς. It still looks "fishy" to me.
οὔτοι ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς πάντα θεοὶ θνητοῖς ὑπέδειξαν,
ἀλλὰ χρόνῳ ζητέοντες ἐφευρίσκουσιν ἄμεινον. (Xenophanes, Fragment 16)

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
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