Luke 12:20: 3rd pl. pres. ind. act. of ἀπαιτέω

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RandallButh
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Re: Luke 12:20: 3rd pl. pres. ind. act. of ἀπαιτέω

Post by RandallButh »

Next question is why Luke would use such a construction here, which clearly seems intended and of which Nolland says, "... it is difficult to see Luke using the third person plural in place of the passive.." (WBC, Luke V 2, pg 687)
To quote Pooh ha-Dov: "Oh, bother."

Part of the problem is that NT scholarship is often working from an incorrect paradigm, an out-of-date worldview. (Note the quotation of BDF above "influence of Aramaic" that only mentions 'Aramaic' for possibly explaining the structure.)
Because Hebrew was relegated by the 19th century to marginal-use-only in most NT worldviews, it was not considered viable for understanding the gospels or early church statements like Papias "in a Hebrew language."
Without Hebrew, Luke's Hebraisms/semitisms became "artificial Septuagintalisms", even when they didn't occur in the LXX !
Consequently, comments like Nolland's arise.

The other side of the coin is that Luke is replete with Hebraisms and semitisms, despite generally trying to smooth these out. Yes, Luke smoothed out semitisms, he didn't systematically add them. (For a humorous example, imagine someone adding the Hebraism "added to send another servant" in the parable of the vineyard, but splitting the word order to put ετερον in front of the infinitive and δουλον afterwards! If inteneded to evoke a LXX-al style it is schizophrenic.)
I see the plural in Luke 12:20 as reflecting Luke's source and left in place by Luke because it didn't cross a threshhold that needed changing.

Now what is supposed to be building a new worldview for gospel scholars is the FACT that not one ancient Jewish story-parable is recorded in Aramaic, despite both Hebrew and Aramaic being widely used throughout rabbinic literature. All the Jewish story parables are in Hebrew.
All 456 of the parables connected to tannaitic (=early) period texts and rabbis are in Hebrew. (All the Amoraic story-parables, too, for that matter.) Yes, I am aware that this is a mispredication and contradiction to the assumptions that grace most encyclopedia and commentary material on the gospels.
But 'facts is facts'.

And Luke 12 is a parable.
That assumes a Hebrew background somewhere in the transmission.
Do reflections of this show up? Fine. No problem. .
Thomas Dolhanty
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Re: Luke 12:20: 3rd pl. pres. ind. act. of ἀπαιτέω

Post by Thomas Dolhanty »

That does have the sound of the “sweet spot” on the bat. And it does explain this nagging question I’ve had concerning why I so often read “Aramaic” when I am expecting to read “Hebrew” in commentaries and reference volumes. And it does point to the limitations of understanding even the GNT without a working knowledge of Hebrew. (I remember Tyndale’s observaton concerning how much his newly aquired knowledge of Hebrew affected his reading of NT Greek.)

The temptation to try to cover the whole territory with Greek alone (via LXX) is no doubt the source of a multitude of sins.
Randall Buth wrote: I see the plural in Luke 12:20 as reflecting Luke's source and left in place by Luke because it didn't cross a threshhold that needed changing. …

And Luke 12 is a parable.
That assumes a Hebrew background somewhere in the transmission.
Do reflections of this show up? Fine. No problem. .
I sure would like to know (the perhaps unknowable), though, the sense of the idiom. When God says, “You fool! Tonight they will require your soul of you!” the sense of “they” must be definite, one would expect, rather than some vague ‘they’. When I read in Wisdom 15:8:
Wisdom 15:8 wrote: καὶ κακόμοχθος θεὸν μάταιον ἐκ τοῦ αὐτοῦ πλάσσει πηλοῦ ὃς πρὸ μικροῦ ἐκ γῆς γενηθεὶς μετ᾽ ὀλίγον πορεύεται ἐξ ἧς ἐλήμφθη τὸ τῆς ψυχῆς ἀπαιτηθεὶς χρέος
… it seems clear (or do I presume?) Who the aorist passive ἀπαιτηθεὶς refers to. “this night they will demand your soul of you” must mean something more than “this night you will die”, and something different than “this night God will demand your soul of you”.

Do you know of a particular Hebrew usage similar to this?
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Bruce McKinnon
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Re: Luke 12:20: 3rd pl. pres. ind. act. of ἀπαιτέω

Post by Bruce McKinnon »

"Do you know of a particular Hebrew usage similar to this?"

If I've read it correctly, Gesenius, para. 144(g) appears to address your question. (I'm on an iPad so can't copy any of it in to this post.)
RandallButh
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Re: Luke 12:20: 3rd pl. pres. ind. act. of ἀπαιτέω

Post by RandallButh »

While the indefinite-subject plural as a functional equivalent of a passive occurs in biblical Hebrew, it became particularly common in mishnaic Hebrew. In addition, this was sometimes in the context of avoiding a direct reference to God.
I assume that the Hebrew behind this would be something like
דורשים ממך את נפשך
however, I don't have access to a search engine of rabbinic literature at the moment.
So I can't give an exact parallel sitation, assuming one is extant.
Thomas Dolhanty
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Re: Luke 12:20: 3rd pl. pres. ind. act. of ἀπαιτέω

Post by Thomas Dolhanty »

Bruce McKinnon wrote:"Do you know of a particular Hebrew usage similar to this?"

If I've read it correctly, Gesenius, para. 144(g) appears to address your question. (I'm on an iPad so can't copy any of it in to this post.)
Genesius 144 g wrote:Rem. The 3rd plur. also is sometimes used to express an indefinite subject, where the context does not admit of a human agent or at least not of several, e. g. Gn 34:27. In such a case the 3rd plur. comes to be equivalent to a passive, as very commonly in Aramaic (see Kautzsch's Gramm. des Bibl. Aram., § 96. 1 c); e.g. Jb 7:3 wearisome nights מִנּוּ־לִֽי have they allotted to me (equivalent to were allotted to me; to make 'invisible powers' the subject is a merely artificial device); Jb 4:19, 6:2, 18:18, 19:26, 34:20, Ez 32:25, y Ps 63:11, Pr 2:22 (in parallelism with a passive); 9:11.
Thank you. That is helpful. It is interesting that he says “the subject is a merely artificial device”. Proverbs 2:22 is one of his examples. The יִסְּח֥וּ is in the qal (active) 3rd person plural – “they will cut off”. The LXX renders it with the 3rd plural future passive ἐξωσθήσονται.
LXX Proverbs 2:22 ὁδοὶ ἀσεβῶν ἐκ γῆς ὀλοῦνται οἱ δὲ παράνομοι ἐξωσθήσονται ἀπ᾽ αὐτῆς

NASB Proverbs 2:22 But the wicked will be cut off from the land And the treacherous will be uprooted from it.
Proverbs 2:22 וּ֭רְשָׁעִים מֵאֶ֣רֶץ יִכָּרֵ֑תוּ וּ֜בוֹגְדִ֗ים יִסְּח֥וּ מִמֶּֽנָּה׃ פ
Randall Buth wrote:While the indefinite-subject plural as a functional equivalent of a passive occurs in biblical Hebrew, it became particularly common in mishnaic Hebrew. In addition, this was sometimes in the context of avoiding a direct reference to God.
I will go there 'a huntin'. Choice certainly seems to 'imply meaning' here as I read it.

There is another comment you made in your first response which really caught my attention:
Randall Buth wrote:And Luke 12 is a parable.
That assumes a Hebrew background somewhere in the transmission.
Is that true? Do most of the NT parables find their root in Hebrew writings? Has anyone ever done a correlation?
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RandallButh
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Re: Luke 12:20: 3rd pl. pres. ind. act. of ἀπαιτέω

Post by RandallButh »

Do most of the NT parables find their root in Hebrew writings? Has anyone ever done a correlation?
Maybe we're talking past each other. My point is that Jewish teachers taught their parables in Hebrew. There is no evidence of any rabbi doing this in Aramaic.

Yes, that is strange and otherwise unexpected because rabbis used both Aramaic and Hebrew for all sorts of things. And the rabbinic records made a point of retaining the words of a teacher in the language used. There were no Aramaic parables. 456 Hebrew story parables from tannaitic sources. And the sky is blue and water is wet.
Thomas Dolhanty
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Re: Luke 12:20: 3rd pl. pres. ind. act. of ἀπαιτέω

Post by Thomas Dolhanty »

RandallButh wrote:
Do most of the NT parables find their root in Hebrew writings? Has anyone ever done a correlation?
Maybe we're talking past each other. My point is that Jewish teachers taught their parables in Hebrew. There is no evidence of any rabbi doing this in Aramaic.

Yes, that is strange and otherwise unexpected because rabbis used both Aramaic and Hebrew for all sorts of things. And the rabbinic records made a point of retaining the words of a teacher in the language used. There were no Aramaic parables. 456 Hebrew story parables from tannaitic sources. And the sky is blue and water is wet.
OK. I get it now. It is not the fact that Luke 12:20 is a parable that "assumes a Hebrew background somewhere in the transmission" - but because Luke 12:20 is a parable which reflects or alludes to a Semitic parable THEREFORE there is Hebrew in the transmission, because all rabbinic parables are preserved in Hebrew rather than in Aramaic. I definitely missed a turn on that trail.
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Stephen Carlson
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Re: Luke 12:20: 3rd pl. pres. ind. act. of ἀπαιτέω

Post by Stephen Carlson »

I haven't looked at the papyri in Egypt but I think that would be way to go. The use of the third-person plural for an impersonal construction is common across different languages, and so I feel it is unnecessary to appeal to Aramaic interference unless one can show that the phenomenon is largely limited to Aramaic mother-tongue speakers of Greek.
Stephen C. Carlson, Ph.D.
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Stephen Hughes
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Re: Luke 12:20: 3rd pl. pres. ind. act. of ἀπαιτέω

Post by Stephen Hughes »

Stephen Carlson wrote:I haven't looked at the papyri in Egypt but I think that would be way to go. The use of the third-person plural for an impersonal construction is common across different languages, and so I feel it is unnecessary to appeal to Aramaic interference unless one can show that the phenomenon is largely limited to Aramaic mother-tongue speakers of Greek.
While Middle Egyptian has several readily recognisable ways of expressing the passive (the marked sdm.tw=f and unmarked passive sdm=f, for example), and Coptic seemingly (for people with only an introductory knowledge of the language) uses an impersonal third person construction for what other languages would use a passive for, but if you are going to look into the cross-linguistic influence in papyri, you might also bear in mind the Coptic use of statives for passives. It is not so common, but seems to be good Coptic idiom, and perhaps related to the unmarked sdm=f forms of Middle Egyptian. Look at this example:
Luke 4:25 wrote:ὅτε ἐκλείσθη ὁ οὐρανὸς ἐπὶ ἔτη τρία καὶ μῆνας ἕξ
Luke 4:25 ([url=https://archive.org/stream/copticversionofn02hornuoft#page/69/mode/1up]Sahidic Coptic Version[/url]) wrote:ΝΤΕΡΕ ΤΠΕ ϢΤΑΜ ΝϢΟΜΤΕ ΝΡΟΜΠΕ ΜΝ ΣΟΟΥ ΝΕΒΟΤ
Help for the reader (Perhaps most people - except Barry)
ΝΤΕΡΕ - "(verbal) when" (followed by a nominal subject), the pronominal form would be ΝΤΕϤ "when he" etc.
ΤΠΕ - ΠΕ "sky" is feminine, so it takes the feminine article. Τ-
ϢΤΑΜ - (from ϢΩΤΜ) "shut" (Crum 595f)
ϢΟΜΤΕ "three", ΣΟΟΥ "six" (cardinal numbers)
ΡΟΜΠΕ "year", ΕΒΟΤ "month" (singular forms)
ΜΝ "and"
The Ν- before ΡΟΜΠΕ "year" and ΕΒΟΤ "month" is regularly used for the construction of numbers, and is unmarked (left untranslated) in English.
The Ν- before the phrase ϢΟΜΤΕ ΝΡΟΜΠΕ ΜΝ ΣΟΟΥ ΝΕΒΟΤ is a prefix with a wide range of meanings, and is marked appropriately in English (see Crum 215ff).

Point being, if you are going to look into the papyri for this point, I think you would be better to at least consider the interplay with Coptic statives.
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
Thomas Dolhanty
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Re: Luke 12:20: 3rd pl. pres. ind. act. of ἀπαιτέω

Post by Thomas Dolhanty »

Stephen Hughes wrote:Point being, if you are going to look into the papyri for this point, I think you would be better to at least consider the interplay with Coptic statives.
As I strain to gain some mastery of Hellenistic Greek, and keep thinking that I will soon have to get back to doing some Hebrew which is getting mighty rusty, I must confess that the thought of delving into something like Coptic Greek boggles the mind! Multi-linguistic limitations and Mortality instruct me that I will have to trust the translators there.
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