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The Declining Optative: Some Observations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 May 2015

K.L. McKay
K.L. McKay*
Affiliation:
Canberra
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Extract

It seems clear that the use of the optative mood declined after the classical period, so that it is less common in New Testament Greek and eventually disappeared, but there is room for some doubt about the rate and manner of its decline, especially as some of the evidence is potentially complicated by literary reminiscence, and the Attic revival apparently brought back some features that were no longer fully understood. A simple counting of occurrences is insufficient to establish statistical trends, for even in the classical period the possibilities for the use of the optative vary according to context: e.g. wishes may occur in dialogue and speeches, but are not normal in historical narrative.

Type
Research Article
Information
Antichthon , Volume 27 , November 1993 , pp. 21 - 30
Copyright
Copyright © Australasian Society for Classical Studies 1993

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References

1 I have not considered the later literature, because this would have been a major project in itself, and would have involved much more attention to the question of literary reminiscence. Although there is undoubtedly literary influence in the language of the later papyri, it can be assumed that at least to some extent this approximates more nearly to the spoken language of the time.

2 I use the terminology of my Greek Grammar for Students (Classics, A.N.U., Canberra, 1974, 1977)Google Scholar (hereafter GGS) and my A New Syntax of the Verb in New Testament Greek (Peter Lang, New York, 1994) (hereafter NSNT): wishes are divided into simple and excluded, and potential statements, etc. into open and excluded, in order to avoid misleading time references and confusing assessments of possibility.

3 See my GGS, Appendix B, §§1-10.

4 As my GGS was written relatively early in the development of my research on aspect, I did not state as categorically as I should have the absence of temporal meaning in the verb-forms, including the indicative. I have been working on a revision to incorporate the results of my more recent work, but have no immediate prospects of publishing it.

5 See my GGS, Appendix B, §§11-12.

6 See my GGS, §§38.1.1Google Scholar, 39.2.2, Smyth, H.W. and Messing, G.M., Greek Grammar, §§1821 f., 1824,2202Google Scholar.

7 For the occurrence of in conditional protases, see Schwyzer, E., Griechische Grammatik (Munich 1950) 2.326Google Scholar.

8 Syntax of the Moods and Tenses of the Greek Verb (London 1912, 1929) §159Google Scholar.

9 See also my comment on Ar. Frogs 23-24 in ‘Repeated Action, the Potential and Reality’ in Antichthon 15 (1981) 39Google Scholar. These and some similar clauses (e.g. Xen, . An. 2.4.4Google Scholar, Lys. 20.21) are regarded as Kupitiv by E. Schwyzer, op.cit. 2.323, but they do not have the obvious wish meaning which is found in the relative clauses (e.g. Xen, . An.> 3.2.3, Dem. 8.51+3.2.3,+Dem.+8.51>Google Scholar) quoted on p. 322, and in a purpose clause the negative would naturally override the which is natural for the potential in statements.

10 Contexts in which the leading verb is indicative normally have past reference, and the verb-forms have traditionally been assumed to express pastness in themselves, but when the leading verb is optative there is often no past time reference in the context, so historic may be a misleading description.

11 Moulton, J.H., A Grammar of New Testament Greek, 1 Prolegomena (Edinburgh 1906) 194 ffGoogle Scholar.

12 The change may be partly a reminiscence of the fact that most of the curses in the psalm are expressed as imperatives, with only a few optatives, which do, however, seem to come at the points where an imperative would seem rather presumptuous. The difference in directness of application is similar to that referred to in Mark 11.14Google Scholar and Mai. 21.19 belowGoogle Scholar.

13 Cf. variations in Dem. 1.19, in Dem. 1.21.

14 See my GGS, §§32.4.5–6Google Scholar.

15 See Goodwin, §§629, 643, 644.

16 See my GGS, §§40.4.1–2Google Scholar, and NSNT, § 17.7Google Scholar.

17 An Historical Greek Grammar (London 1897, repr. Hildesheim 1968) §§677, 1924Google Scholar.

18 The Use of the Subjunctive and Optative Moods in the Non-Literary Papyri (Philadelphia 1926) 143 ffGoogle Scholar.

19 The Verb in the Greek Non-Literary Papyri (Athens 1973) §§627 ffGoogle Scholar.

20 See Horn 147.

21 Mandilaras, §639. His explanation (§640) for the replacement of the potential by the future is that there was no difference in meaning between them.

22 Remote is the description I have used in my GGS and NSNT. Some grammarians (e.g. Goodwin, Smyth, Rutherford) refer to them as future less vivid. Mandilaras (§649) dismisses Horn's reference to such clauses as expressing a ‘possible contingency’, and claims that they ‘are merely future conditions’. But any future reference depends on the context, and is not an essential feature, even if it is more common than not.

23 Mandilaras, §§604-5, and see the next section.

24 See my ‘On the Perfect and Other Aspects in the Greek Non-Literary Papyri’, BICS 27 (1980) 26Google Scholar.

25 To this passage Horn (144) adds a note: ‘Apparently in primary sequence; but and precede’, thus suggesting that an aorist infinitive must have an element of pastness in it.

26 He actually quotes this and two other examples (including the one in the same document) to characterize them as ‘not clear’, immediately before the reference to the ‘few examples’, and he follows this (161) with only two examples, PPar. 15.59–60Google Scholar (51 B.C.) and POxy. 1252.29Google Scholar (A.D. 290), which both seem clearly to be remote conditional protases.