Robert S. Daniel wrote: ↑July 3rd, 2020, 6:40 am
The participial phrase doesn't need an antecedent, and besides it is introducing a new set of characters, namely, the four carrying the paralytic.
Well, exactly. I'm looking at how new characters are introduced using verbs that have no explicit subject. And there are actually several instances of that in this passage in the first three verses.
Καὶ εἰσελθὼν πάλιν εἰς Καφαρναοὺμ δι᾽ ἡμερῶν ἠκούσθη ὅτι ἐν οἴκῳ ἐστίν.
εἰσελθὼν - this introduces Jesus without naming him
ἠκούσθη - this refers to the people in that region, again without saying so
Roughly: when
he returned to Capernaum
they heard that he was home. When I read this, it's easy to resolve in my mind because the whole Gospel is about Jesus and there's this ongoing sense of "they" being the crowd out there, often in a particular region.
καὶ συνήχθησαν πολλοὶ ὥστε μηκέτι χωρεῖν μηδὲ τὰ πρὸς τὴν θύραν, καὶ ἐλάλει αὐτοῖς τὸν λόγον.
συνήχθησαν πολλοὶ - refers to the many people gathering at the house, this is clearly specified
Now we come to:
καὶ ἔρχονται φέροντες πρὸς αὐτὸν παραλυτικὸν αἰρόμενον ὑπὸ τεσσάρων.
There's no clear signal that ἔρχονται and συνήχθησαν do not have the same subject. Grammatically, they could, and there's not a clear shift in context. I was surprised to see new characters introduced in this way, and was wondering why it did not, for instance, say something like:
καὶ ἔρχονται τινες φέροντες πρὸς αὐτὸν παραλυτικὸν αἰρόμενον ὑπὸ τεσσάρων
or
καὶ ἔρχονται τινες φέροντες πρὸς αὐτὸν παραλυτικὸν αἰρόμενον ὑπὸ τεσσάρων
or perhaps as Luke does:
Luke 5 wrote:17 Καὶ ἐγένετο ἐν μιᾷ τῶν ἡμερῶν καὶ αὐτὸς ἦν διδάσκων, καὶ ἦσαν καθήμενοι Φαρισαῖοι καὶ νομοδιδάσκαλοι οἳ ἦσαν ἐληλυθότες ἐκ πάσης κώμης τῆς Γαλιλαίας καὶ Ἰουδαίας καὶ Ἰερουσαλήμ· καὶ δύναμις κυρίου ἦν εἰς τὸ ἰᾶσθαι αὐτόν. 18 καὶ ἰδοὺ ἄνδρες φέροντες ἐπὶ κλίνης ἄνθρωπον ὃς ἦν παραλελυμένος, καὶ ἐζήτουν αὐτὸν εἰσενεγκεῖν καὶ θεῖναι ἐνώπιον αὐτοῦ.
To me, that would make it clear that new characters were being introduced. I don't think this is an attempt to put the focus on the paralytic because the focus seems to be more on what the people carrying him are doing, or at least equally on them - the extent to which the paralytic is not the main focus is also a little surprising to me. Clearly, Mark is introducing new characters without describing them, but there are simple ways to do that, as Mark does earlier (using πολλοί) and as Luke does for the equivalent sentence in the story (using ἄνδρες), or perhaps using τινες.