Jeremy Spencer » March 8th, 2013, 12:49 pm
Jeremy wrote:ἔρχεται οὖν πρὸς Σίμων Πέτρον. λέγει αὐτῷ, Κύριε, σύ μου νίπτεις τοὺς πόδας;I was wondering about the placement of μου prior to νίπτεις. Does the Greek text grammatically move the possessive pronoun forward as a matter of emphasis? Does Peter’s question, and its phrasing in Greek grammar, imply a contrast between Peter’s feet and those of the other disciples? Related questions: if Peter had asked, Κύριε, σύ νίπτεις τοὺς πόδας μου; how would the question be different, or how would it be heard differently? Your thoughts?
Stephen Carlson has all the real answers about enclitic pronouns. I would just note that I’ve noted a tendency for personal pronouns in a clause to appear in direct sequence and that, in this particular instance, the σύ is emphatic and the antithesis between the second and third persons indicated is a sharp one.
Justin Cofer » March 8th, 2013, 1:42 pm
Jeremy wrote:ἔρχεται οὖν πρὸς Σίμων Πέτρον. λέγει αὐτῷ, Κύριε, σύ μου νίπτεις τοὺς πόδας;I was wondering about the placement of μου prior to νίπτεις. Does the Greek text grammatically move the possessive pronoun forward as a matter of emphasis? Does Peter’s question, and its phrasing in Greek grammar, imply a contrast between Peter’s feet and those of the other disciples? Related questions: if Peter had asked, Κύριε, σύ νίπτεις τοὺς πόδας μου; how would the question be different, or how would it be heard differently? Your thoughts?
I would recommend Steve Runge’s Greek New Testament Bundle, which includes along with his helpful discourse grammar an annotated Greek NT which annotates and identifies discourse markers. I am attaching a print screen of the verse in question.
Stephen Carlson » March 8th, 2013, 3:35 pm
Jeremy Spencer » March 8th, 2013, 5:42 pm
MAubrey » March 8th, 2013, 6:09 pm
Jeremy wrote:Thanks for your replies; I’ve benefitted from all of them! Do you think there is a pointed, purposeful contrast between σύ and μου in this passage, where both precede the verb? Or do you think the grammatical law from Classical Gk. by which the enclitic μου tends to be pulled forward precludes such an antithesis? Some older commentators have observed a major emphasis on σύ and perhaps a lesser emphasis on μου. I’d be interested in your opinions.
The explanation of “lesser emphasis on μου” is nothing more than a result of older commentators having no idea of how to account for the enclitic’s position otherwise. It was the best they could do. And that’s true of Robertson, too. He was trying to account for something that appeared to be inexplicable within his framework. But he was wrong and we’ve gone beyond him in the past 100 years. Robertson is wrong on this point. The fundamental problem is that its is a contradiction in terms. An enclitic is unaccented and thus, by definition, de-emphasized. You cannot emphasize a word that has not accent. It is phonologically impossible. You can’t do it in English and you can’t do it in Greek.
As for Steve’s analysis, three points.
(1) when he did the anaylsis, he did not take into account second position phenomena (Wackernagel’s Law) and thus his analysis is essentially unaware of the phonological constraints in the interpretation of “emphasis.” Steve is fully aware of this deficiency after the fact and it will likely be updated at some point in the future.
(2) But even within Steve’s analysis, you must recognize the fact that main clause emphasis isn’t on μου, but on the entire constituent μου … τοὺς πόδας. And since the syntactic head of that constituent is πόδας, there is no requirement for μου to be emphasized. that is to say, the “emphasis” is on foot, not my, from his perspective.
(3) In any case, I would argue that his analysis here is wrong. In terms of basic definitions, a topic is what shared/known information between participants, what the clause is about and focus is what is asserted about that topic for a statement and what is questioned about a topic for a question. In terms of the cultural context, the known information is that when people enter a house from the dusty outdoors, a servant is expect to wash those people’s feet. And within that context, Peter asks a rhetorical in surprise: Do you wash my feet? Implicational statement: It should not be you, who does the footwashing. But again, the main point as to the enclitic pronoun is this: you can’t emphasis words that are de-emphasized. That’s a contradiction. If John had wanted to emphasize both the “you” and “my,” there’s a form for that: ἐμού. John didn’t use that form.
RandallButh » March 10th, 2013, 2:44 am
It is important to recognize that philological tendencies like “Wackernagel” still involve choice, and choice involves meaning. In other words, it does no good to say that the fronting of μου is common. One must still explain the choice. In this case, rather than call the fronting the marked Focus, the most salient and marked piece of information, we can call ‘you’ the most salient and marked piece of information with ‘my [feet]’ serving as the marked frame of reference, and non-focal.
Alternatively, perhaps Stephen C. is saying that σύ has pulled the μου and that therefore the μου would be marking the σύ as truly Focal, and not just Topical frame of reference (C.C.). That would be an interesting use of a secondary word order shift. It would be good to look at about 10 examples against 10 examples where the μου stays post-verb.