From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Sun Dec 17 1995 - 07:14:36 EST
At 5:43 AM 12/17/95, Domenico LEMBO wrote:
>>>>
>Mk 2:21a. OUDEIS EPIBLHMA hRAKOUS AGNAFOU EPIRAPTEI EPI hIMATION PALAION;
>21b. EI DE MH, AIREI TO PLHRWMA AP' AUTOU TO KAINON TOU PALAIOU KAI XEIRON
>SXISMA GINETAI.
>
>...........................................................
>
>Mt 9:16a. OUDEIS DE EPIBALLEI EPIBLHMA hRAKOUS AGNAFOU EPI hIMATIWi
>PALAIWi; 16b. AIREI GAR TO PLHRWMA AUTOU APO TOU hIMATIOU KAI XEIRON SXISMA
>GINETAI.
>==================================================================
>
>
>
>Carl,
>
>maybe Mark's Greek is not a literary one, but sounds not that barbarous.
>For the sequence common to both Mark and Matthew, there is no problem at
>all. TO PLHRWMA cannot be but subject. So your first translation is the
>good one: "The patch pulls from it (Mt: from the very garment) ...". (btw,
>I wonder whether a perispomenous AIREI from AIREO would not be a better
>reading).
>As for the Marcan sequence TO KAINON TOU PALAIOU, granted, it is not so
>elegant. However, it is solid Greek: "The patch pulls from it *inasmuch as
>the former is new, the latter is old*"
>Do You find it so unprecedented?
Thanks for your response, Domenico. No, I don't think it is so much
unprecedented as it is, as you put it, "inelegant," which is what I really
meant to say with my subject-header "pidgin Greek." We have been having a
discussion on the list--from time to time--on whether Mark's Greek is
really very likely to be that of a native user of it, and different ones
among us have taken different sides on that question, which is really, of
course, not subject to proof. I have stated a couple times my very
subjective view that Mark would not pass a first-year Greek composition
class today. To be honest, I'm not sure I could, either, but I think I can
distinguish between better and worse Greek in terms of style.
While I understand the argument that Stephen Carlson attested for the
Griesbachians--that the Marcan reading of this verse could very well be
derived from the text in Matthew--and grant its plausibility, I am
nevertheless inclined to think it unlikely; I think it much more likely
that both Matthew and Luke have altered Mark's "inelegant" and tortured (my
word) word-order.
You raise an interesting secondary question about whether the verb
shouldn't be read as hAIREI perispomenon rather than AIREI paroxytone. I
don't know if you were following our most recent, rather heated, discussion
of IOUNIAN in Rom 16.7, where NA27 and UBS4 give us IOUNIAN perispomenon
but IOUNIAN paroxytone is the much more likely reading (and Metzger argues
stronly for it in the second edition of his Textual Commentary--and Fred
Danker says the new edition of BAGD will argue for reading the proper name
as a feminine form too). The question raised is whether the earliest MS
evidence really shows any accents--and of course it doesn't. The same is
true, is it not, of the verb in our passage? i.e., the uncial text AIREI
could be understood as representing either hAIREI perispomenon or AIREI
paroxytone? The aspiration mark, Ithink, would also be missing from the
beginning of the word.
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/
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