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Please quote the Greek text you are discussing directly in your post if it is reasonably short - do not ask people to look it up. This is not a beginner's forum, competence in Greek is assumed.
1. This describes the boat filling up with water - but wait, it's plural, at its most literal level, this verb is describing Jesus and the apostles filling up with water. Should I treat this as a figure of speech or an idiom? Can you think of other similar examples in Greek?
2. Should I treat the imperfect as ingressive here or not? Does it say the boat was beginning to fill with water, or that the boat was filling with water? How can I know which sense to give it?
1. This describes the boat filling up with water - but wait, it's plural, at its most literal level, this verb is describing Jesus and the apostles filling up with water. Should I treat this as a figure of speech or an idiom? Can you think of other similar examples in Greek?
2. Should I treat the imperfect as ingressive here or not? Does it say the boat was beginning to fill with water, or that the boat was filling with water? How can I know which sense to give it?
Wouldn't you read συνεπληροῦντο in the BDAG sense that they were 'being swamped' (hence the imperfect). If you think of a boat in a storm with wave after wave breaking over the bow, things floating around, and sitting in water, I think the focus of the narrator (at least if he were in the boat - or told the story from that perspective) would be on the men more than on the boat. 'We were being flooded'. 'We were being swamped, and were about to go down'.
Thomas Dolhanty wrote:Wouldn't you read συνεπληροῦντο in the BDAG sense that they were 'being swamped' (hence the imperfect). If you think of a boat in a storm with wave after wave breaking over the bow, things floating around, and sitting in water, I think the focus of the narrator (at least if he were in the boat - or told the story from that perspective) would be on the men more than on the boat. 'We were being flooded'. 'We were being swamped, and were about to go down'.
Hmmm, I should have consulted BDAG before posting ...
Yes, I think that's what's going on, but I'm trying to figure out exactly how it means this, if you get my drift. If the situation is described literally, it is the boat that is filling, and the verb does seem to imply filling up. I thought that was interesting.
Jonathan Robie wrote:Yes, I think that's what's going on, but I'm trying to figure out exactly how it means this, if you get my drift. If the situation is described literally, it is the boat that is filling, and the verb does seem to imply filling up. I thought that was interesting.
If it means "being swamped", it is idiomatic, and this verb (which is not very common - 3 times in Greek Bible) does not appear to me to be used anywhere else in that sense, at least not in the Greek Bible, Philo or Josephus. One would expect such an idiom to be a very common one in a coastal community, if it is an idiom. Certainly it is a common idiom in English.
The base verb, though - πληρόω - certainly has a broad range of idiomatic usage. For example how could they "fill Jerusalem" with their teaching (πεπληρώκατε τὴν Ἰερουσαλὴμ τῆς διδαχῆς ὑμῶν) in Acts 5:28? For that matter, how could they "fill" Jerusalemites with their teaching?
1. This describes the boat filling up with water - but wait, it's plural, at its most literal level, this verb is describing Jesus and the apostles filling up with water. Should I treat this as a figure of speech or an idiom? Can you think of other similar examples in Greek?
I don't think the idea of the boat filling with water is being mentioned here. I think this refers to that everybody except Jesus was manning an oar, the till or a sail. συνεπληροῦντο {τὸ πλοῖον} "They were taking it upon themselves to fully man the boat (do every job - the whole range of jobs - possible to save the boat)".
Jonathan Robie wrote:2. Should I treat the imperfect as ingressive here or not? Does it say the boat was beginning to fill with water, or that the boat was filling with water? How can I know which sense to give it?
I think that it means they were trying their best efforts to keep the situation under control for some time, but despite that, they came to be in real danger.
Thomas Dolhanty wrote:The base verb, though - πληρόω - certainly has a broad range of idiomatic usage. For example how could they "fill Jerusalem" with their teaching (πεπληρώκατε τὴν Ἰερουσαλὴμ τῆς διδαχῆς ὑμῶν) in Acts 5:28? For that matter, how could they "fill" Jerusalemites with their teaching?
Stephen Hughes wrote:I don't think the idea of the boat filling with water is being mentioned here. I think this refers to that everybody except Jesus was manning an oar, the till or a sail. συνεπληροῦντο {τὸ πλοῖον} "They were taking it upon themselves to fully man the boat (do every job - the whole range of jobs - possible to save the boat)".
Really! I'm not (yet) convinced, but I'm listening ...
Yes but even this hyperbole, provides you with τὸν κόσμον – the to-be-filled and with τὰ γραφόμενα βιβλία - the filler. You have a filler and a fillee!
But how do you fill Jerusalem with διδαχῆς. How many units does it take to reach a full state? How do you know when the city is full, and what does it look like then?
Stephen Huges wrote: I don't think the idea of the boat filling with water is being mentioned here. I think this refers to that everybody except Jesus was manning an oar, the till or a sail. συνεπληροῦντο {τὸ πλοῖον} "They were taking it upon themselves to fully man the boat (do every job - the whole range of jobs - possible to save the boat)".
It’s not hard to see this in the verb, but I sure can’t find it in the sentence, although there’s no doubt that Mark 4 and Matthew 8 ‘instruct’ one on how to fill (no pun intended) in the details here.
Well, I'm not a good convincer and I hate to be seen as the one who always giving out on BDAG, but the "swamping" idea seems like a house of cards. The parallel accounts go into the details of the waves, the water and the boat, but this seems different. It contrasts Jesus and the disciples with the storm in the background.
Both the BDAG and LSJ entries talk about manning vessels with a full complement as a meaning for this word. That is how I would naturally take it here without reference to the parallel accounts.
Woodhouse gives "swamp" (be covered with water) and "submerge" (come to be under the water) as κατακλύζειν, and "sink" (full of water or completely under the water) as καταδύειν - the meaning of "sink" (as in Davy Jone's locker) is βυθίζειν and presumably they were not carrying heavy cargo (γόμος) to require the air inside (displacement) the boat to keep the boat afloat, so even if it did fill with water, it would only καταδύειν "sink" and not βυθίζειν "sink" due to the natural bouyancy of the wood. A body that does not have natural bouyancy would βολίζεσθαι "sink", and one that forced its way to the surface when submerged would ἀνωθεῖν "float (up)", while actual floating (if you needed to say it explicitly) would be ἐπιπλεῖν. It doesn't seem that the abstract concept of (negative / positive) bouyancy was considered as such, but rather that objects had the tendency to force themselves either up or down in the water.
While πληροῦσθαι means to be filled, συμπληροῦσθαι means to be filled completely. Practically speaking, if the boat was συμπληροῦσθαι with water "completely full" of water, the situation would be quite different, and the pillow would be floating and there would be no need to waken the one with his head on it. I'm guessing that in a storm, a tarpaulin of some sort would have been lashed over the prow of the boat, rather than the whole boat being open - but that imagination doesn't really affect the meaning of "completely full (of water)".
If you would like to compare πληροῦσθαι "to be filled" with γεμίζειν (+gen. later acc. of the thing filled with) "to fill", γέμειν (+gen. of the thing with which it is filled) "to be full / filled", γεμιστός "laden", "full", I would say that in terms of use with a ship, γεμίζειν, γέμειν and γεμιστός would probably specifically mean their cargo (γόμος).
Not very convincing, but there are a few thoughts of mine anyway.
Yes but even this hyperbole, provides you with τὸν κόσμον – the to-be-filled and with τὰ γραφόμενα βιβλία - the filler. You have a filler and a fillee!
Sorry to be slow on the uptake and the dim-witted one, but which part is the punch-line here?