Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Acts 27:23—cool syntax

I have been reading through Acts. Hear how Paul expresses himself to the men on the ship, in Acts 27:23:
παρέστη γάρ μοι ταύτῃ τῇ νυκτὶ τοῦ θεοῦ, οὗ εἰμι [ἐγώ] ᾧ καὶ λατρεύω, ἄγγελος
That is, "For there stood by me on this night of God—whose I am and whom I serve—an angel!" The word-order seems to heighten the suspense.

Some scribes must have felt this awkward; I notice that the Byzantine "straightens" it out:
Παρέστη γάρ μοι ταύτῃ τῇ νυκτὶ ἄγγελος τοῦ θεοῦ, οὗ εἰμι, ᾧ καὶ λατρεύω,
UBS4 doesn't even note the variance, and Metzger's commentary doesn't even discuss it.

6 comments:

Kim said...

So, what did you finally decide upon to put the Greek text in?

You realize you're simply inspiring me to take on more stuff? My Mounce's Basics of Biblical Greek, taunts me from the shelf regularly.

Rileysowner said...

Becoming motivated to learn Greek is good. However, for me it is a matter of trying to re-learn what I forgot when I had a general anesthetic for knee surgery. It seems whenever I have a general, I forget things I have learned. It is all there when I go under, and it is gone when I wake up. Strangely it is harder to learn the second time around. Even stranger is I remember a lot of the Greek Grammar I learned, but the various verbal and noun forms are gone.

Tom Gee said...

Did you check NA27 for this variant? My understanding is that Nestle-Aland has a more detailed critical apparatus then UBS.

(I don't have a NA, so I can't help.)

DJP said...

Kim—I use Unicode via BW7 copy and paste. Works in anything based on IE7, or FireFox, or Opera.

Rileysowner—wow, that's really sad. I'm very sorry to hear that. Hope this is a gentle motivation.

I looked at some apparatus. TC isn't my strength; the support looked weak, but it was a cursory glance.

Daniel said...

For those who want to see the various idiosyncracies between the greek texts, they are highlighted in bold here.

Dan
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The StogiEvangelist said...

No mention in NA27. I also checked a couple of grammatical commentaries including Barrett (ICC). No comments. Seems strange given the difference in emphasis.