From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Sat Jan 10 1998 - 07:53:08 EST
At 4:14 PM -0600 1/9/98, Edward Hobbs wrote:
>Surely the hH OUSA in Acts 5:17 is the equivalent of our _i.e._, or
>_viz._. "The high priest and all those with him, i.e. the Sadducee
>party . . . "
>
>See Edwin Mayser's _Grammatik der griechischen Papyri aus Ptolema"er Zeit_
>Vol. 2, part 1, 347f., discussing use of hO WN as "officialese" for
>"namely". Why this interesting usage didn't get into Bauer, I don't
>know; but a great deal in Mayser lies untouched by most NT Greek readers.
>I was beating the drums for Mayser a few years ago on this List, but it is
>a pretty scarce item, I gather.
This makes very good sense indeed, and looking at the construction this
way, we'll have to say that it's the copulative rather than the existential
sense of EIMI, inasmuch as hH OUSA is equivalent to a relative clause of
the sort, hHTIS HN hH TWN SADDOUKAIWN hAIRESIS, "which was in fact the
Sadducean sect").
>I loved Carl Conrad's suggestion ("the then-existing" or such); but not
>only is the issue of the dating (whether real or author-implied) a
>possible difficulty, but why would the same author--Luke--refer to the
>Sadducees in his Gospel without this caveat?
> Luke 20:27 takes care to explain that the Sadducees
>didn't believe in resurrection, an explanation he takes over from Mark,
>and which becomes an issue in Acts. But that they no longer existed?...
Then did the Sadducees really continue to exist after the destruction of
the Temple and Jerusalem, when their was no longer any sacrificial cultus?
Perhaps I've accepted too much at face-value the notion that only the
Pharisees really survived as a distinct and influential sect after the
destruction of Jerusalem. What I was thinking, perhaps rather naively, was
that Luke in Acts 5:17 might be looking back historically (perhaps from the
mid-80's?) upon events that transpired while the Sadducean sect was still
very much a force to be reckoned with in Jewish affairs. They don't really
loom large in the gospels apart from that synoptic pericope about the
resurrection, do they? My impression is that the synoptic tradition
harangues much more against the Pharisees (especially Matthew) who
continued to be influential after the destruction of Jerusalem. Of course
all this depends on the dating of the gospels, an issue probably best not
to be discussed on B-Greek.
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics/Washington University
One Brookings Drive/St. Louis, MO, USA 63130/(314) 935-4018
Home: 7222 Colgate Ave./St. Louis, MO 63130/(314) 726-5649
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu OR cconrad@yancey.main.nc.us
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/
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