[B-Greek] Deixis
Kimmo Huovila
kimmo.huovila at helsinki.fi
Wed Mar 10 09:52:44 EST 2004
On Tuesday 09 March 2004 17:57, waldo slusher wrote:
> --- Kimmo Huovila <kimmo.huovila at helsinki.fi> wrote:
> > Similarly, in John 2:1 (KAI THi hHMERAi THi TRITHi
> > GAMOS EGENETO EN KANA THS
> > GALILAIAS, KAI HN hH MHTHR TOU IHSOU EKEI), Mary was
> > in Cana before the
> > wedding and could not have arrived late? I am not
> > convinced
> > we can make the deduction from the tense. If I
> > understand Waldo correctly, if
> > Mary arrived late, it should say KAI ESTIN hH
> > MHTHR...EKEI. I feel Levinsohn
> > (Discourse Features of NT Greek, pp. 200-201) is
> > closer to truth when he
> > says that the historical present (as opposed to
> > imperfect or aorist)
> > highlights the events to follow. Thus whether here
> > is HN or ESTIN has to do
> > with what is highlighted in the narrative, not on
> > whether Mary was late. I am
> > not completely sure I understood Waldo's view
> > correctly, though.
>
> I simply do not follow what you are saying or arguing
> here. Mary was in Cana, and on the third day measured
> from the time of her arrival, a wedding took place.
> All this tells us is that from the deictic point of
> the wedding, Mary arrived three days ago.
I was just trying to reflect if I understood your view correctly. Apparently
not, then. I thought the EGENETO would have moved the DC, and then the HN
would point to a time before EGENETO (as DC).
(Perhaps the "third day" is related to a series of temporal indicators in ch 1
(29, 35, 43) and is not indicative of the time of arrival relative to the
wedding?)
Kimmo Huovila
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