(1) I can very well understand the copyist's error (I still remember
marvelling, when much younger, at those Soviet athletes with "CCCP" on
their uniforms and being told tha it really meant "SSSR" = "USSR." But I
wasn't expecting EROUNTA for some reason;I thought that if it wasn't
POIOUNTA it must be some unfamiliar form of hEPOMAI, which struck me as
strange, because even the aorist ESPOMHN is always in the middle.
(2) DEHSHi just from the looks of it could be a dative sg. noun form of
DEHSH, but I know of no such noun; there is the 3d decl. DEHSIS, which
means "prayer" or "petition." On the other hand, I've seen EDEI as an
imperfect and EDEHSE as an aorist of the impersonal DEI, and I would expect
a future DEHSEI. But the form DEHSHi, if it is a verb can only be
subjunctive 3d sg. because of the H with iota subscript--the future would
be DEHSEI. So the combination of the HN = EAN and the subjunctive form (and
remember: there is no future subjunctive, although there is a future
optative) indicated it had to be an aorist subjunctive. Such, at any rate,
is the reasoning involved.
Paul Bodin, in a message sent later last night, has kindly supplied the
actual text of the whole sentence, thus:
HN DE POTE KAI LOGOUS EROUNTA TINA DEHSHi EISAGEIN, MALISTA MEN EOIKOTA TWi
PROSWPWi KAI TWi PRAGMATI OIKEIA LEGESQW, EPEITA hWS SAFESTATA KAI TAUTA.
EROUNTA as fut. active ptc. acc. sg. of LEGW will yield a sense that is not
so very far distant from the LOGOUS POIOUNTA of my stab in the dark last
night. This text yields, roughly:
"And should there ever be need to introduce [into a historical narrative] a
person (TINA) who is going to deliver a speech (LOGOUS EROUNTA), then let
him {that hypothetical person] speak (LEGESQW) things most probable
(MALISTA EOIKOTA) for the particular person (PROSWPWi, a word borrowed from
drama) and things most appropriate (OIKEIA with MALISTA supplied from
ellipsis) to the situation (TWi PRAGMATI), and in addition (EPEITA) he
should speak (repeating LEGESQW from ellipsis) these things also (KAI
TAUTA) as lucidly as possible (hWS SAFESTATA)."
And right there is the doctrine of Hellenistic historiography which some
have argued that Luke has employed in his gospel and in Acts. This is, of
course, not the appropriate forum to argue the case for or against Luke's
adopting that doctrine.
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University
One Brookings Drive, St. Louis, MO, USA 63130
(314) 935-4018
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu OR cwc@oui.com
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/