Saturday, December 10, 2005
Another 'Byzantine' reading (Luke 18:14)
I'm still working through Robinson and Pierpont. I'll post a list of accentual mistakes when I've finished the whole. One reading that struck me in the Byzantine text they print (also shared by A Ψ) is the expression η γαρ εκεινος in Luke 18:14. What is the function of γαρ in this context?
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BAGD #2 or #3
ReplyDelete#2 - (clarification) "you see"
#3 - (inference) "so, then"
It translates "rather than (η) then (γαρ) that guy (εκεινος)." (!?)
Cf. Martin Luther:
Dieser ging gerechtfertigt hinab in sein Haus, nicht jener.
PJ,
ReplyDeleteH GAR EKEINOS looks like an example of a rough reading in the MT. Perhaps the TR reading H EKEINOS can be explained by the difficulties with GAR.
The old guys, A.Plummer (Luke ICC) and H.A.W. Meyer, understood H GAR as interrogative not in the common manner "is it not so?" but rather in the sense "or did the other ...". However the interrogative )\H followed by GAR isn't a known idiom (see H.A.W. Meyer). Furthermore the introductory formula LEGW hUMIN makes the interrogative sound a little incongruous.
Perhpas the GAR only strengthens the comparison. If this is the only such occurrance of H GAR in the NT, why didn't more Byzantine scribes smooth out the reading to something like the bulk of the Alexandrians here? The no less than 5 variations in this variation unit may indicate scribal difficulty not with the Alexandrian reading, but rather with the Byzantine, further strengthening its possible priority here. IOW, it is hard to imagine any of the other readings giving rise to this one.
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