Re: More on Constituent Order
David L. Moore (dvdmoore@ix.netcom.com)
Sun, 26 Jan 1997 23:51:53 -0500
At 06:53 PM 1/26/97 -0500, David L. Moore wrote:
>At 02:59 PM 1/26/97 -0800, Micheal Palmer wrote:
>
>>
>>There is significant manuscript variation regarding the constituent order
>>of a certain section of Mark 1:4. I would like to ask for the judgments of
>>the more experience readers of Greek on this list regarding the difference
>>of implication between the reading printed in UBS4 and the one found in D,
>>Theta, 28. 700 the Latin (at least the Latin texts consulted for the
>>production of UBS4 and Nestle Aland 27), and SyriacP.
>>
>>The reading in UBS4/Nestle Aland 27 is supported by Sinaiticus, L, Delta
>>and a few others:
>>
>> EGENETO IWANNHS O BAPTIZWN EN THi ERHMWi KAI KHRUSSWN. . .
>>
>>In the variant which concerns me here, we find the following order:
>>
>> EGENETO IWANNHS EN THi ERHMWi BAPTIZWN KAI KHRUSSWN. . .
>>
>>In these manuscripts EN THi ERHMWi is placed before the participle
>>BAPTIZWN. What impact would this change of order have on your reading of
>>the text?
>>
>>Of course, this question is directly related to the Greek Word Order
>>thread, so those who respond may want to change the subject line so readers
>>will be able to categorize your responses appropriately.
>
> The most significant difference between the two has to do with the
>inclusion of the article (present in Aleph, B, 33, L, Delta and some
>others), the inclusion of which the editors of N27 considered questionable.
>With it, the printed text of the N27/UBS4 is calling John "the baptizer" or
>"the Baptist." It appears to me that it would not fit to put the article
>before BAPTIZWN in the variant, but I would need to do a search to be
>certain of that. As the variant stands, it is using the participle BAPTIZWN
>in a verbal, rather than substantive sense. It says something like, "John
>appeared in the wilderness baptizing and preaching..." Even *without* the
>article in the N27 text, as the word order there stands, we could interpret,
>"John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness preaching...;" but the
>participle would be ambivalent and open to different interpretations
>depending on whether one unerstood it as verbal or substantival. With the
>article, there is no question that it should be interpreted as substantival.
>
On reading Micheal's recent post, I looked again at the passage in
question, and realized that what I wrote as quoted above didn't take into
account the KAI before KHRUSSWN which does call for a verbal understanding
of BAPTIZWN - probably so even with the article before BAPTIZWN.
My apologies for having muddied the waters.
David L. Moore Director
Miami, Florida, USA Department of Education
dvdmoore@ix.netcom.com Southeastern Spanish District
http://members.aol.com/dvdmoore of the Assemblies of God