But would it not be fair to say that the participle can have the force or sense (or function) of an imperative without technically being one?
Sorry, didn’t mean to post that twice.
These are precisely why I asked the question I did.
It seems that in Greek multiple imperatives can exist happily side by side, 1Pet 5:8, 2Cor 13:11 and others. But these are in a sense separate imperatives even if directed to the same person/s. Is it then fair to say then that Greek (Koine at least) prefers to use a participle in place of an imperative for a subordinate action rather than the main action ? The main thing is not get up, but take the child and his mother to Egypt, for example.
Thx
D
Yes that’s right, and it’s not just koine, it’s regular Greek. You can have a run of imperatives as in English, whether or not linked by και’s: “Sit down, stand up, walk into the jaws of Hell.” Or you can have a participle followed by an imperative: “Get up and walk around” ἀναστὰς περιπάτει, as distinct from e.g. “He got up and walked around” ἀναστὰς περιεπάτει—the point being that ἀναστὰς (lit. “having gotten up …”) is not affected by the imperative: it’s not imperatival itself.
To put it very simply though, do we actually have two different situations where we see a participle followed by an imperative? 1) When the speaker is commanding that two things be done, and 2) (rarely) when the speaker uses the participle as mere circumstance
For what I’d call a clearer example of 2), here is Xen. An. 3.1.46:
ἀλλ’ ἀπελθόντες ἤδη αἱρεῖσθε οἱ δεόμενοι ἄρχοντας, καὶ ἑλόμενοι ἥκετε εἰς τὸ μέσον τοῦ στρατοπέδου καὶ τοὺς αἱρεθέντας ἄγετε
After “αἱρεῖσθε”, the “ἑλόμενοι” seems to be used to separate out the rest by time, not as a repetition of the command.
Both 1) and 2), of course, would require different English translations.
What, more?
My point was that it does not have to be an imperative that follows the participle; either way the participle is subordinate and not itself imperatival. But of course there can be all sorts of situations—not just two—where a participle is followed by an imperative, according to the local semantic relationship between the participle and the imperative.
To go back a step or two, with regard to this Xenophon sentence the thing to note is that ἀπελθόντες ἤδη αἱρεῖσθε and ἑλόμενοι ἥκετε both have exactly the same construction, each in its own context. That’s what we need to come to terms with.
Michael, we’re dozens of posts into a thread where Peter has been given a dream command by a talking piece of silverware descending from heaven, and you haven’t brought up the cross gospel yet.
But yes, the shared construction being used with different force at different times is exactly what we need to come to terms with.
Here in the Acts account under discussion, the construction seems not to signify two commands at all (whether one subordinate or not), but like the Xenophon example, it is being used to signify circumstance, as is clear from the surrounding narrative. The story is really from Acts chapter 10, where it’s clear that the command is meant to be fulfilled some time after Peter awakes from his “ecstasy”, with the awakening being mere incident. The standard English translation is very unfortunate as it makes it appear that Peter has been given an immediate command which he then ignores.
The Homer quote, which I thought was obvious enough, but seems to have gone over people’s heads, refers to Dream telling Agamemnon not to forget the vision after he awakes. It wasn’t meant to signal anything about the grammar/construction, but simply to humorously refer to a similar gap of time between dreams and awakening. I probably should have quoted it in English.
And I would nitpick that the participle in this construction does not always seem subordinate. It usually is, certainly, (a point that I made above) but sometimes it was also used in cases where it seems indistinguishable in force between two linked imperatives, as the Luke example shows clearly enough. There, καθεύδετε is contrasted with ἀναστάντες, with προσεύχεσθε in parallel.
I think we’ve exhausted this, and then some. We’re getting no further forward, in fact we’re now going backwards. The answer to your original forked question about ἀναστάς was (of course) Yes. But talking of things going over people’s heads, the message of my “Sit down, stand up, walk into the jaws of Hell” (not mine but Radiohead’s) seems to have gone over yours. I’m out.