[B-Greek] Acts 16,3 FOLLOW UP

Iver Larsen iver_larsen at sil.org
Tue Mar 30 12:23:14 EST 2004


>
> The point of the note in Culy/Parsons was not to credit Wallace with
> inventing the category ("does not warrant another syntactic category" may
> have been more appropriate language). On the appropriateness of
> the category
> "causative active" in this particular instance, I would simply
> add that all
> languages characteristically leave certain information implicit. The fact
> that the "executive" or actual agent is left implicit here has nothing
> syntactically to do with the voice of the verb, though such information
> cannot be left implicit with middle or passive verbs.  Moreover, Greek has
> ways of forming causative constructions, such as through the use
> of the verb
> DIDWMI plus and infinitive.  In the note on Acts 16:3, Mike Parsons and I
> were attempting to urge Greek scholars to guard against creating
> categories
> to account for non-syntactic phenomenon. That the "causative active" has a
> longer history than we implied does not validate it as a
> syntactic category.
>
>
> Martin Culy

I would agree with Martin, since what is happening here is probably more a
cultural presupposition than a grammatical or syntactical phenomenon.

It seems to be related to the difference between a hierarchical and communal
versus an egalitarian and individualistic society. As I have worked for
years in the translation of the NT into several African languages
(reflecting hierarchical societies), I noted that they had no problem saying
that Herod beheaded John the Baptist, etc, because they know that a leader
is responsible for what he orders his people to do. But when translating
into Danish, I often had to make explicit that he "had it done" or asked
someone else to do it. Our cultural expectation is that if he did it, then
he did it himself.

As for the original question of circumcision, it is culturally assumed that
Paul did not himself circumcise Timothy, but arranged for the normal experts
to do it. However, that assumption is not based on the grammar. One should
not ask questions of the grammar that the grammar can not answer. In our
Danish version of Acts 16:3, we said "He had Timothy circumcised" as the REB
does. Confer also the NLT. This is one of the many instances where a literal
translation into English (or Danish) is somewhat misleading, not because of
the grammar, but because of the difference in cultural assumptions.

Iver Larsen





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