Gospel of Mark as Classical and High Koine Greek

Biblical Greek morphology and syntax, aspect, linguistics, discourse analysis, and related topics
Matthew Longhorn
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Gospel of Mark as Classical and High Koine Greek

Post by Matthew Longhorn »

Ok, going to go slowly on this one if people want to engage rather than just posting everything in one hit.
Reading Voelz’s Novum Testamentum 62 article “Standard/Classical Greek Constructions in the Gospel according to Mark and Their Importance for Interpretation”

Voelz starts out in his intro
The Greek of the Gospel according to Mark (GM), if considered at all, is generally considered to be basic at best or inelegant at worst by interpreters. Vincent Taylor, e.g., describes it as “simple and popular,” while H.B. Swete, in his standard treatment, can say that Mark’s Greek pays “little attention to elegance.” The contention of this article is that such an assessment is wrong. Specifically, we contend that Mark’s Greek is sophisticated, and that in its sophistication it makes use of verbal and grammatical features that can properly be characterized as Attic/classical Greek (CG) or “high” Koine Greek (KG).
I would be interested in our classicists thoughts on one of his arguments based on vocabulary - the use of ευθυς as being compatible with classical greek usage
εὐθύς. This adjective is frequently used adverbially in GM (see, e.g., 1:18; 6:25, 7:25; 11:2; 14:43), as is generally recognized. That does, however, reflect the proclivities of several classical writers. See, e.g., Xenophon, Anab. 4.3.12–13:10 εὐθὺς οὖν Ξενοφῶν αὐτός τε ἔσπενδε καὶ τοῖς νεανίσκοις ἐγχεῖν ἐκέλευε καὶ εὔχεσθαι τοῖς φήνασι θεοῖς τά τε ὀνείρατα καὶ τὸν πόρον κ’ τὰ λοιπὰ ἀγαθὰ ἐπιτελέσαι. σπείσας δ’ εὐθὺς ἦγε τοὺς νεανίσκους παρὰ τὸν Χειρίσοφον, “Then, immediately, Xenophon himself both proceeded to pour a drink offering and to order [attendants] to fill the cup for the young men and to pray to the gods who had revealed both the dreams and the river ford, and to bring to conclusion the other good things. And upon pouring the drink offering immediately he proceeded to lead the young men to Cheirisophos.”11 See also Xenophon, Anab. 4.3.23, Aeschylus, Pers. 361, Thucydides 1.1.12
There are a number of other areas that he touches on, included in the broader categories of morphology, syntax. Rather than dumping everything into one post I figured I would do one example at a time from each section further down in this thread (if one develops)


A comment from his conclusion bears keeping in mind
It may be noticed that in many of the instances cited above, the occurrences in Mark’s writing that parallel standard/CG usages are found in the latter half of the Gospel… This should not be surprising. As I have argued elsewhere, the Greek profile of Mark’s Greek changes noticeably as one proceeds through the Gospel… In general, the first half is characterized by frequent occurrences of εὐθύς…
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Re: Gospel of Mark as Classical and High Koine Greek

Post by Stephen Carlson »

Matthew Longhorn wrote: September 21st, 2021, 12:30 pm Voelz starts out in his intro
The Greek of the Gospel according to Mark (GM), if considered at all, is generally considered to be basic at best or inelegant at worst by interpreters. Vincent Taylor, e.g., describes it as “simple and popular,” while H.B. Swete, in his standard treatment, can say that Mark’s Greek pays “little attention to elegance.” The contention of this article is that such an assessment is wrong. Specifically, we contend that Mark’s Greek is sophisticated, and that in its sophistication it makes use of verbal and grammatical features that can properly be characterized as Attic/classical Greek (CG) or “high” Koine Greek (KG).
Ultimately, I suppose, it’s a judgment call. My sense is that Mark’s Greek is not sophisticated, though other aspect of the work, esp. its plotting, are. At any rate we can look at what properly educated exegetes in antiquity like Origen and Eusebius thought of the Greek of the Gospels and, to put it plainly, they were embarrassed at their lack of stylistic sophistication.
Matthew Longhorn wrote: September 21st, 2021, 12:30 pm I would be interested in our classicists thoughts on one of his arguments based on vocabulary - the use of ευθυς as being compatible with classical greek usage
εὐθύς. This adjective is frequently used adverbially in GM (see, e.g., 1:18; 6:25, 7:25; 11:2; 14:43), as is generally recognized. That does, however, reflect the proclivities of several classical writers. See, e.g., Xenophon, Anab. 4.3.12–13:10 εὐθὺς οὖν Ξενοφῶν αὐτός τε ἔσπενδε καὶ τοῖς νεανίσκοις ἐγχεῖν ἐκέλευε καὶ εὔχεσθαι τοῖς φήνασι θεοῖς τά τε ὀνείρατα καὶ τὸν πόρον κ’ τὰ λοιπὰ ἀγαθὰ ἐπιτελέσαι. σπείσας δ’ εὐθὺς ἦγε τοὺς νεανίσκους παρὰ τὸν Χειρίσοφον, “Then, immediately, Xenophon himself both proceeded to pour a drink offering and to order [attendants] to fill the cup for the young men and to pray to the gods who had revealed both the dreams and the river ford, and to bring to conclusion the other good things. And upon pouring the drink offering immediately he proceeded to lead the young men to Cheirisophos.”11 See also Xenophon, Anab. 4.3.23, Aeschylus, Pers. 361, Thucydides 1.1.12
The striking part about the Mark’s usage and which makes it non-classical is that he uses εὐθύς as a discourse marker, to join segments of discourse that aren’t apparently “immediate.” Voelz’s “adverbially” does not quite capture this behavior and leads him to cite an adverbial but non-discourse-marker use of it in Xenophon. This basically misses the point.
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Eeli Kaikkonen
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Re: Gospel of Mark as Classical and High Koine Greek

Post by Eeli Kaikkonen »

Even if some feature would be "Classical" it still could be an attempt at best, making the whole stylistically even worse. (Notice "could". I'm not saying it is.)
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Re: Gospel of Mark as Classical and High Koine Greek

Post by Matthew Longhorn »

Stephen Carlson wrote: September 21st, 2021, 6:19 pm At any rate we can look at what properly educated exegetes in antiquity like Origen and Eusebius thought of the Greek of the Gospels and, to put it plainly, they were embarrassed at their lack of stylistic sophistication.
Thanks for that comment, that is a useful tidbit that I wasn't aware of! I guess that trusting the instincts of native speakers on this is possibly wise

Stephen Carlson wrote: September 21st, 2021, 6:19 pm The striking part about the Mark’s usage and which makes it non-classical is that he uses εὐθύς as a discourse marker, to join segments of discourse that aren’t apparently “immediate.” Voelz’s “adverbially” does not quite capture this behavior and leads him to cite an adverbial but non-discourse-marker use of it in Xenophon. This basically misses the point.
I didn't pick up on that at all, but I can see it now that you point it out
Eeli Kaikkonen wrote: September 22nd, 2021, 2:56 am Even if some feature would be "Classical" it still could be an attempt at best, making the whole stylistically even worse. (Notice "could". I'm not saying it is.)
Fair comment
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Re: Gospel of Mark as Classical and High Koine Greek

Post by Barry Hofstetter »

In addition to the elements that Stephen pointed out, Mark's style is largely paratactic. He uses far less subordination than a comparable classical author would.
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Re: Gospel of Mark as Classical and High Koine Greek

Post by MAubrey »

Stephen Carlson wrote: September 21st, 2021, 6:19 pm though other aspect of the work, esp. its plotting, are.
This is a sentiment that I can get behind. There are a number of impressive things going on in terms of narrative style that don't fit the traditional categories of "classical style".
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Matthew Longhorn
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Re: Gospel of Mark as Classical and High Koine Greek

Post by Matthew Longhorn »

Thanks for input so far
Another feature that Voelz identifies as being classical/high koine syntax is hyperbaton. Not sure how much I can post before hitting issues of copyright? Would appreciate input on that from moderators

Basically he argues that hyperbaton is found in the following verses, and that these don’t have parallels in the other synoptic gospels. I havent checked these against NA28, but he does state that he doesn’t use the same readings of that in all instances
2:28 κύριος … τοῦ σαββάτου
3:28 πάντα … τὰ ἁμαρτήματα
6:38 πόσους … ἄρτους
8:5 πόσους … ἄρτους
11:13 συκῆν … ἔχουσαν
11:13 ὁ καιρός … σύκων
12:34 πάντων … τῶν βαλλόντων
13:4 ταῦτα … πάντα
14:62 ἐκ δεξιῶν … τῆς δυνάμεως
14:64 ἔνοχον … θανάτου
14:67 σύ μετὰ τοῦ Ναζαρηνοῦ ἦσθα τοῦ Ἰησοῦ
14:68 σύ … λέγεις
15:14 τί … κακόν
16:6 τὸν Ἱησοῦν … τὸν Ναζαρήνον
He continues:
Such hyperbaton is easily seen in classical authors. See, e.g., Plato, Phaed. 115D: ἀλλ᾽ οἰχήσομαι ἀπιὼν εἰς μακάρων δή τινας εὐδαιμονίας, “But I will leave, departing, in fact, into some happinesses of the blessed ones.” See also Xenophon, Memor. 1.2.22: ὧν πρόσθεν ἀπείχοντο κέρδων αἰσχρὰ νομίζοντες εἶναι, τούτων οὐκ ἀπέχονται, “Which gains they formerly were avoiding, thinking them to be base, these they do not avoid.”
He further posits that 9:41: ἐν ὀνόματι ὅτι Χριστοῦ could be hyperbaton with the understanding being that the preposition and noun are “artificially” brought before the οτι with the sense being “because you are in the name of Christ”
Also with 8:24: βλέπω τοὺς ἀνθρώπους ὅτι ὡς δένδρα ὁρῶ περιπατοῦντας. Here he sees a possible reading of τους ανθρωπους being brought forward before the οτι so that it can be rendered “I do see, because I see the people walking around as trees.”
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Re: Gospel of Mark as Classical and High Koine Greek

Post by Stephen Carlson »

Matthew Longhorn wrote: September 22nd, 2021, 3:47 pm Thanks for input so far
Another feature that Voelz identifies as being classical/high koine syntax is hyperbaton. Not sure how much I can post before hitting issues of copyright? Would appreciate input on that from moderators

Basically he argues that hyperbaton is found in the following verses, and that these don’t have parallels in the other synoptic gospels. I havent checked these against NA28, but he does state that he doesn’t use the same readings of that in all instances
Basically, hyperbaton is found in all levels of Greek (see Devine & Stephens’s book on it), but classical style uses it a bit differently. In particular, good classical style will use hyperbaton as a structuring device to separate periods into cola, where hyperbaton can be used to define or delineate a colon that is included in a period (see Scheppers’s Colon Hypothesis for how this works in Lysias). Mark, by contrast, doesn’t employ a periodic style in the first place, so you don’t really have the periods that need dividing up and this classical use of hyperbaton doesn’t even come up.

It would be fun to go through Voelz’s examples and see what’s going on. The first one (2:28) just looks like the Wackernagel placement of an enclitic ἐστἰν, which more phonological than stylistic. The second (3:28) could be an instance of right dislocation with a cataphoric πάντα. Neither of these are prototypical cases of hyperbaton and arguably something other than hyperbaton.
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Re: Gospel of Mark as Classical and High Koine Greek

Post by RandallButh »

I'm a little late to the thread.

Yes, Mark can be called sophisticated, as an author doing things with his style, but it is not a recognized Greek style, certainly not a classical style, as many have noted. The quotes from Eusebius and Origen would be nice to have for quick future reference. The concept of ancient recognition of non-elegant style arose in another thread within the past weeks.

The gospel writers may all be called idiosyncratic since they do things that are not common or expected Greek style. Matthew uses τότε as a narrative device in his own Greek style (he was not translating when using this, though it comes from Aramaic narrative אדין/באדין). Mark's εὐθύς reflects a colloguial mishnaic Hebrew מיד/ומיד. John is perhaps the smoothest, consistent Greek, but plain and with limited vocabulary. (I attribute this to native Greek speakers pretty much recording, editing, and preserving lectures from a non-native.) Luke is up and down. He was obviously trained to write a good Hellenistic/Koine Greek but that is not what he wrote in his gospel. He incompletely smooths out his Greek sources that go back to primarily Hebrew.

It wouldn't hurt for NT scholars, often trained extensively in Greek, to have more training in the stylistic features collected by Abba Bendavid in his 2 volume work comparing literary (biblical/classical) Hebrew and colloquial (mishnaic) Hebrew. (Jason, you will enjoy this if you do not have it.)
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Re: Gospel of Mark as Classical and High Koine Greek

Post by Matthew Longhorn »

RandallButh wrote: September 23rd, 2021, 11:57 am The gospel writers may all be called idiosyncratic since they do things that are not common or expected Greek style. Matthew uses τότε as a narrative device in his own Greek style (he was not translating when using this, though it comes from Aramaic narrative אדין/באדין). Mark's εὐθύς reflects a colloguial mishnaic Hebrew מיד/ומיד. John is perhaps the smoothest, consistent Greek, but plain and with limited vocabulary. (I attribute this to native Greek speakers pretty much recording, editing, and preserving lectures from a non-native.) Luke is up and down. He was obviously trained to write a good Hellenistic/Koine Greek but that is not what he wrote in his gospel. He incompletely smooths out his Greek sources that go back to primarily Hebrew.

It wouldn't hurt for NT scholars, often trained extensively in Greek, to have more training in the stylistic features collected by Abba Bendavid in his 2 volume work comparing literary (biblical/classical) Hebrew and colloquial (mishnaic) Hebrew.
Curious on this - What level of Hebraic influence do you see in the New Testament Greek?
I have read a number of articles over the past few years that argue against a Hebraic background to the Greek employed in the New Testament. From what I have read, hebraism seems to get used as a catch all for “we don’t have another explanation for this”. It is found in a number of these instances that the same features come up in non-religious Greek documents. This makes me sceptical of a number of these cases.
Obviously a big case of “citation needed” to back that assertion up, I only have one author that comes to mind unfortunately.
Laurentiu Florentin Mot in his book “morphological and syntactical irregularities in the book of revelation”
On page 25, summarising Porter’s views he writes
he further contends that regional variations penetrate the vocabulary and pronunciation, but not the syntax. Thus Semiticisms, though present in the NT, are borrowed especially as theological vocabulary, but they do not intrude into the grammatical structure of Greek
On page 41 footnote 187 he quotes Geldart’s Modern Greek 102
it is very easy to explain everything as a hebraism, and the less our knowledge of Hebrew the more readily does the explanation suggest itself. Now there are hebraisms in the Septuagint, and though in a less degree, in the new Testament; but all the unusual phrases are not Hebraisms…
I am not suggesting you are saying everything unusual is of Semitic influence, but this is the kind of thing that gives me cause to pause when hearing claims of Semitic influence

Also, Mot in BAGL 6 pgs 51 - 56 writes
Empirical studies generally argue that syntactical irregularities are not due to the mother tongue, but seem to be developmental. The following questions are to be considered in the quest for the source of a syntactical (in our case prepositional) peculiarity.33 Is the construction in question possible in Hebrew/Aramaic and impossible in Greek? Is a prepositional peculiarity also present in non-Semitic linguistic backgrounds? Is an irregular construction awkward in literary κοινή, but quite common in non-literary κοινή?Did an irregular construction change from being awkward into becoming accepted later, as the language evolved?

Apologies if I am misunderstanding your comments I quoted above. It would be interesting to see studies on this kind of thing showing the impact of a native tongue on foreign language acquisition. Something I am guessing you have read quite a bit on, whilst I haven’t really read anything.
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