[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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