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John 1:6 Ἐγένετο ἄνθρωπος, ἀπεσταλμένος παρὰ θεοῦ, ὄνομα αὐτῷ Ἰωάννης·
1.4 [ὁ] βαπτίζων ἐν τῇ ἐρήμῳ καί {C}
In view of the predominant usage in the Synoptic Gospels of referring to John as "the Baptist" (ὁ βαπτιστής occurs in Mk 6.25 and 8.28, as well as seven times in Matthew and three times in Luke), it is easier to account for the addition than for the deletion of the definite article before βαπτίζων. The omission of καί in a few Alexandrian witnesses is the result of taking ὁ βαπτίζων as a title.
A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament Bruce Metzger, UBS 1971
If we ignore the the article in [ὁ] βαπτίζων, the first part of Mk 1:4 is syntactically similar to John 1:6:
While I was looking at Mark for participles in relation to foreground and background, I noticed that this use Ἐγένετο is not the common LXX idiom found in Luke 2:1 Ἐγένετο δὲ ἐν ταῖς ἡμέραις ἐκείναις or Mark 1:9 Καὶ ἐγένετο ἐν ἐκείναις ταῖς ἡμέραις.
An ignorant side-question. How to explain the “common LXX idiom” exemplified by Mk.1.9 (εγενετο followed by a more substantial finite verb)? It will surely be a semiticism; as Greek it’s blatantly ungrammatical. But for the most part the LXX is regular koine, and its translations must have been made by bilingual scholars (presumably Jewish). So why this particular departure from koine norms? Just to retain a Hebrew flavor? Most of the other supposed semiticisms lost their status as such in the wake of Greek papyri, but this one remains glaring. What’s the current thinking on this peculiar exception to normal LXX translation practice?
Conybeare ("there is no syntax in the LXX, only parataxis") claims that the καὶ ἐγένετο'ing not only copies Hebrew idiom, but creates parataxis in the Greek.
The really good English translations of the Hebrew don't bother resisting the parataxis either, despite the un-English flavor. For example, either the KJV or Robert Alter's translation of Genesis 24. All of our punctuation and verse-numbering does break up the effect a bit though.
“One might get one’s Greek from the very lips of Homer and Plato." "In which case they would certainly plough you for the Little-go. The German scholars have improved Greek so much.”
Thanks for the reference Joel. Evidently the LXX translators, for whatever reason, largely refrained from grecizing the syntax. (This seems to be the main thing that distinguishes it from koine. The LXX shouldn’t be called koine without this qualification.) I still wonder why. Did they simply want to retain the style of the Hebrew, or did they have inadequate knowledge of Greek, perhaps relying on glossaries for the word equivalents? That might explain some of the odd word choices. But undoubtedly there were already at least a few Jews at Alexandria at home in both languages at the time, despite the cultural separation. Most if not all Jews will have been fluent in Greek. Less so in Hebrew, if I'm not mistaken.
Anyway, the LXX, at any rate in the Torah books, is definitely what it claims to be, a metaphrase, translating the words and only the words. Cf. the Homeric D-scholia, which fed into several of the much later metaphrases that Markos is so fond of. Just as with Homer, here too it’s apparently the original language that had become alien. But I really should look properly at the LXX and read up on it. Not to mention learning Hebrew.
With Mark, interestingly, it’s a different story. There (and in Luke where he affects the style) the εγενετο idiom is applied in a much more restricted and stereotyped way than in the LXX. Does that represent contemporary aramaic, or is it a stylization of LXX practice?
I think that it's LXX pastiche. Mark drops the style halfway through his Gospel, as he approaches the more realistically narrated Passion narrative.
“One might get one’s Greek from the very lips of Homer and Plato." "In which case they would certainly plough you for the Little-go. The German scholars have improved Greek so much.”
The strange style of the Septuagint is probably best explained by a religious reverence for the text that felt imitating the Hebrew as much as possible would preserve it's power better than a more idiomatic translation. I don't think poor knowledge of Greek is the explanation, as the reason behind the translation was that many Jews knew Greek better than Hebrew at this point. The Septuagint wasn't made for proselytizing the Greeks but for the Greek-speaking Jewish population.
The survival of εγενετο in the NT is probably because the authors were very familiar with the Septuagint and wanted to echo it in their writings, as the opening of John's gospel εν αρχη is clearly echoing Genesis 1 from the Septuagint. Religious language can do strange things like the curious survival of "fear not" and other echos of the KJV in contemporary English.
Thanks calvinist, that’s just about what I was fumbling my way towards in my post: LXX composed by and for hellenized Jews (whether or not under Ptolemaic patronage), and syntactical features of the Hebrew deliberately carried over as integral to the scriptures, resulting in a LXX idiolect. Maybe all that’s common knowledge.
And now that I look more closely at εγενετο examples in NT I see I was wrong to suggest that NT usage has a more restricted range than LXX; you find just about all the LXX constructions (Conybeare 41-42) also in NT. It seems there’s no need to postulate Aramaic influence on the gospels at all, then, apart from the verbatim quotes (Jesus on cross etc.). But did Aramaic share the idiom?
“One might get one’s Greek from the very lips of Homer and Plato." "In which case they would certainly plough you for the Little-go. The German scholars have improved Greek so much.”
