Re: Clarification on "Bad Greek"
Don Wilkins (don.wilkins@ucr.edu)
Mon, 4 Nov 1996 18:19:30 -0800
Randy Leed wrote:
>I'm not sure what I said that gave Don the idea that I think "this
>construction or that in the NT is bad Greek." I'd like to know, so
>that, if I indeed suggested such a thing, I can apologize and correct
>my misleading language. I offered some examples of what I would
>consider "bad Greek," but I wrote these myself; I did not lift them
>from the NT. Perhaps I did not make that point clear.
[snip]
>I used the expression "bad Greek" to describe a construction the
>existence of which was implied in a comment by another list member.
>In so labeling it, I have questioned whether it EVER appears in
>extant Greek literature. This is not at all the same thing as trying
>to evaluate this or that writer's style as "good" or "bad." From the
>beginning my approach has been that if we can find even one clear
>instance of the construction in question (nominative relative pronoun
>attracted to an oblique case, where the antecedent is explicit so
>that the relative is not pressed into double duty), I will no longer
>view the idea as "bad Greek." Since, by the nature of the case, any
>NT construction does exist in the literature, I call nothing in the
>NT "bad Greek."
I guess I am somewhat confused, Randy, because I thought you were saying
that the attraction of the pronoun in question was an instance of bad
Greek. But your closing statement seems clear enough, so my apologies if I
have misled others about what you are saying. "Bad greek" and "solecism"
are terms that are frequently applied to the NT by some excellent scholars
(e.g. Dan Wallace, whom I mentioned), so it was easy for me to jump to
conclusions.
Don Wilkins
UC Riverside