From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Fri Jun 20 1997 - 07:25:00 EDT
At 6:41 AM -0400 6/20/97, Jonathan Robie wrote:
>Clayton Bartholomew wrote:
>
>>Following the punctuation of Ropes who places the
>>period after ANQRWPOIS, the whole verse reads:
>>
>>PEIQARCEIN DE QEO MALLON H ANQRWPOIS. O DE PETROS
>>EIPEN PROS AUTOUS . . .
>>
>>Is there some other way of dealing with this reading?
>>Can the clause PEIQARCEIN DE QEO MALLON H ANQRWPOIS be
>>construed as part of the following speech of Peter
>>when the words are in this order?
>
>To me, the real problem is that period, which was added by Ropes. Take it
>out, and replace it with a comma: PEIQARCEIN DE QEO MALLON H ANQRWPOIS, hO
>DE PETROS EIPEN PROS AUTOUS - "we must obey God rather than men", said Peter
>to him, "the God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom you had killed by
>hanging on a cross..."
I'm afraid this won't really solve the problem, Jonathan. If "PEIQARCEIN
... ANQRWPOIS" is meant to be the content of what Peter said, then the DE
is misplaced. One would expect, particularly of as good a writer as Luke
(or the putative Luke!) hO DE PETROS, PEIQARCEIN QEWi MALLON H ANQRWPOIS,
EIPEN PROS AUTOUS ... The standard formulation of directly cited speech is
enclosure within the clause indicating the speaking, or else, and I don't
think this is common in NT KoinŽ, use of the verb EFH in the middle, or use
of an H D'hOS hO PETROS, as:
"PEIQARCEIN DE QEWi MALLON H ANQRWPOIS," H D'hOS hO PETROS PROS AUTOUS
or even better:
"PEIQARCEIN DE QEWi," H D'hOS hO PETROS PROS AUTOUS, "MALLON H ANQRWPOIS."
A large part of the problem is the absence of punctuation in the ancient
written language. These conventions I'm citing in classical Attic are
really ways in which Attic made clear that the items thus indicated were
indeed directly quoted. But in NT KoinŽ one hardly finds anything quite
like that; one finds much more often a simple hOTI, and too often one finds
no clear indication that it is cited speech at all. I think Clayton's
right: the reading in Codex Bezae really IS a "puzzlement."
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics/Washington University
One Brookings Drive/St. Louis, MO, USA 63130/(314) 935-4018
Summer: 1647 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(704) 675-4243
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/
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