Who was doubtful about whether or not it was Jesus? How is ιτ more correct to translate οἱ δέ: “some” (of them) as many translators did, or “they” i.e. the Eleven themselves (all of them)? Thus, according to the New American Bible:
The eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had ordered them. When they saw him, they worshiped, but they doubted.
What is οἱ here grammatically? May it be a relative pronoun? So far as I understand, most of the translators regard οἱ δέ as if it were preceded by οἱ μέν. Is it really implied in the text?
P.S. According to Theophylact of Ohrid οἱ δέ may mean here just the same as τινές δέ. Is it possible?
The NT reference grammars are not particularly lucid nor are they speaking with one voice on this. ATR p694 (bottom) calls οἱ δέ in Mt. 28:17b a demonstrative pure and simple without any contrast. ATR doesn’t directly address change of subject from preceding sentence leaving the question hanging. On the other hand N.Turner p37 says that in classical greek one would expect a change of subject from the preceding sentence but it isn’t perfectly clear if Turner considers Mt. 28:17 an example.
R.T. France[1] suggests οἱ δέ marks a subgroup within the group of disciples citing BDF §250 “what was said first did not apply to all” cf. Matt. 26:67.
France[1] notes further that some scholars read οἱ δέ in Mt. 28:17 as referring to either the previous subject οἱ ἕνδεκα μαθηταὶ (no contrast) or a separate group apart from οἱ ἕνδεκα μαθηταὶ.
[1] Matthew NICNT 2007 page 1111, n. 14.
POSTSCRIPT
it appears that BDF §250 considers οἱ δέ in Mt. 28:17 Matt. 26:67 an abbreviated (defective ?) form of what we see in Acts 28:24. ATR p694 (bottom) appears to disagree with this.
The standard NT reference grammars are old and written for previous generations. It is not uncommon to have more trouble with exegesis of the grammars than exegesis of the greek text.
I think that the contrast is internal to verse 17. Athanasius and Chrysostomus both seem to agree: “οἱ μὲν προσεκύνησαν, οἱ δὲ ἐδίστασαν.” Also, it would seem to me that the αὐτοῖς in verse 18 couldn’t make sense unless all eleven were at the mountain.
Off-topic: Why does the NAB translate ἐτάξατο as “ordered?” Isn’t it a reference to the mountain where he “appointed” them apostles? Note that Matthew has forgotten that he trimmed the mountain reference from his retelling of Mark 3:13-19.
In his book “Truth in Translation”, J. BeDhun, dealing with the meaning of the verb προσκυνέω, cites several translations of the fragment we are talking about:
NAB: The eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had ordered them. When they saw him, they worshiped, but they doubted.
NW: . . . they did obeisance, but some doubted.
NASB: . . . they worshiped Him; but some were doubtful.
NIV: . . . they worshiped him; but some doubted.
NRSV: . . . they worshiped him; but some doubted.
TEV: . . . they worshiped him, even though some of them doubted.
AB: they fell down and worshiped Him; but some doubted.
LB: . .. worshiped him – but some of them weren’t sure it really was Jesus!
KJV: . . . they worshipped him: but some doubted.
Here all translations except the NW have recourse to “worship” - a rendering which makes no sense in this context. How can someone worship and doubt at the same time? Notice how all eleven disciples prostrate themselves, but not all believe what they are experiencing > (actually, the NAB is the only version to correctly translate the Greek “but they doubted”; there is nothing in the Greek from which you could get “some”)> .
How can he be so sure about the meaning of οἱ δέ?
By the way, if the Greek text is somewhat ambiguous here, is it possible to keep that ambiguity in a translation? In that case, the translation would be more adequate, wouldn’t it?
I imagine that BeDuhn’s certainty has the same source as Samuel Johnson’s definition of “pastern.”
οἱ δἐ as a contrast without οἱ μέν is a very common idiom, and it means “some of them.” You see it all the time in Xenophon.
Of course, if Athanasius and Chrysostomus are right (and why wouldn’t they be?), it would be “some prostrated themselves, and some hesitated” which is why Jesus was προσελθὼν towards them. Matthew is trying to say that they all stopped still in their tracks, and that Jesus came to them.
οἱ δέ, when opposed to a larger number of persons or things, is often used without οἱ μέν, as προεληλυθότες ἐπὶ χιλόν, οἱ δ’ ἐπι ξύλα > having gone for fodder, and some for fuel > X. C. 6.3.9.
Although to be fair, apparently it’s not as frequent as I thought. I just did a quick scan through the Anabasis, and didn’t see any instances of the above. There always seems to be a μέν hanging around.
Not that I can cite any source, but I have the impression that μέν is comparatively rare in the NT and the pair ὁ μέν…ὁ δἐ in the NT belongs to a more elevated, Atticizing style. Someone correct me if I’m wrong.
According to N. Turner (Syntax, p. 331) the pattern ὁ μέν…ὁ δἐ is less common in NT than classical but it isn’t rare. John doesn’t use it. Here are a few samples.
As Vladimir and Joel have already shown by quoting some Greek paraphrases of the Church Fathers, προσεκύνησαν οἱ δὲ ἐδίστασαν is ambiguous. It can mean at least three things.
Combining the grammar and the context, I think #1 and #2 are equally possible. #3, by which there were others at the mountain besides the eleven, seems to me unlikely due to the context. The 11 are a special group receiving a special revelation and special instructions.
No, I don’t think any allusion to that story is meant. Rather ἐτάξατο refers back to v. 10 b, the instructions to the 11 through the women: ὑπάγετε ἀπαγγείλατε τοῖς ἀδελφοῖς μου ἵνα ἀπέλθωσιν εἰς τὴν Γαλιλαίαν, κἀκεῖ με ὄψονται.
As Clayton has already pointed out, you are wrong. μέν, δέ in its basic sense is very common in NT Greek.
Wow, that’s new to me. I’ll have to check this out. If it’s true that John never uses μέν, δέ, that does say something striking about his style. Stock/Conybeare allege that μέν δέ is very rare in the LXX, even in places where you would expect it, but I have seen it several times. “Rare” is hard to quantify.
This is even more true of the newer linguistic meta-jargon. My view is that when you need a map to read the map, you might as well forget about the map and just explore the territory directly.
That’s an interesting thought. The Greek text is routinely more ambiguous than the English, so an argument can be made that one translational goal could be to preserve the ambiguity. I’m not aware of anyone who has tried this. But I like the concept.
μέν … δέ is relatively rare in NT compared to 3600 passages in Xenophon but please note …
… the pattern we were discussing is ὁ μέν…ὁ δἐ.. The article + μέν|δἐ is an idiom, see C.F.D. Moule Idiom Book NT 1959 p. 107. In John I found οἱ μὲν … ἄλλοι [δὲ] which is a dubious reading.
EDIT: The search pattern article + μὲν … article + δὲ finds more than one idiom so some of the samples I posted before may not be relevant to the text under consideration.
οἱ δὲ ἐδίστασαν: if the meaning were simply “but they doubted,” οἱ would be absent. The οἱ makes all the difference. In principle the words could mean “but others [others than the 11, that is] doubted," οἱ δέ switching subject, but in context it has to mean “but some [of them] hesitated, felt doubt, wavered.”
The eleven did proskunesis. That’s what the Greek says, plainly and unequivocally. The meaning can’t be that only some of them did, while others felt doubt or were in two minds about it. That would require οι μεν (as e.g. at Acts 28:24). Any such interpretation is impossibly forced, and presumably due to the felt difficulty in reconciling proskunesis with doubt.
So there’s no ambiguity, so far as I can see. But οἱ δὲ ἐδίστασαν does make a rather odd appendage to the main sentence. It hooks up with the scepticism of the different accounts in Luke and John, and I suspect it’s a subsequent addition.
I’m not contesting, I can’t really pretend that I’ve become an experienced reader of the NT all of a sudden I probably read it somewhere like a decade ago, and probably remember it half incorrectly. Anyway, I meant precisely the ὁ μέν…ὁ δἐ construction with the article. A funny thing is that the first text in real, actual Greek I read was the Gospel of John, which in turn might explain why I had a sort of faint recollection that there’s something up with ὁ μέν…ὁ δἐ in the NT. After that, I soon turned to Homer…
There seems to be general agreement that οἱ δὲ should mark a change in the subject. However, a few scholars decades ago proposed a reading where οἱ δὲ is coextensive and coreferential with Οἱ ἕνδεκα μαθηταὶ. R. T. France (Matt NICNT 2007 p1111 n14) cites K. Grayston JSNT 21 (1984)105-106, supported by D. Hagner, (Matt. WBC 1993 v2 p844).
I checked this out in Guy Cooper[1] who lists three exceptions to this rule in Attic where Cooper suggests that ὁ δέ reiterates the subject:
Thanks for that quote from the Anabasis 4,2,6, Clayton. It is a very clear parallel and it establishes that οἱ δέ doesn’t ALWAYS mark a change in subject. If you put a gun to my head, I guess I would agree with the majority who see the οἱ δέ here as something like τινες δε, but, as I said, it is possible that προσεκύνησαν. οἱ δὲ ἐδίστασαν means something like προσκυνήσαντες, ἐδίστασαν.
Yes, it does, for me, more or less. I guess προσεκύνησαν. οἱ δὲ ἐδίστασαν can mean four things, including οἱ μὲν προσεκύνησαν, οἱ δὲ ἐδίστασαν.
μὲν … οἱ δέ (and variations) which reiterates the subject of the previous sentence is not rare in Homer and Herodotus. Cooper’s treatment[1] of this cites about thirty examples[2]. All the examples include μὲν. Cooper[3] claims that οἱ δέ (and variations) without reference to μὲν may be strongly adversative and in many places indicates the subject is changing from the previous sentence. He gives about twenty five examples.
μὲν … οἱ δέ (and variations) reiterates the subject of the previous sentence:
[2] Unfortunately he seems to be using a different citation system for Herodotus which makes finding the examples a pain. The book and sections numbers are generally correct but the line numbers aren’t even close.
Wallace has several books. Assume you are talking about GGBB which is an intermediate grammar not a reference grammar. Someone said a while back you need to discount the white space in GGBB, it isn’t really a heavy book just looks like one.
The standard reference grammars on New Testament all assume that you will be very familiar with classical authors and Attic syntax. They are written for people who studied Latin and Greek in “grammar school” (k-12). This makes them hard to read for 21st century students.
That is the best comparandum on offer for “The eleven prosekunhsan” = "Only some of the eleven prosekunhsan,” but it doesn’t hold. The passage in question goes οἱ δὲ καταδραμόντες εἰς τὸ πεδίον συλλαβόντες ἀνθρώπους ἤγαγον· οἱ δὲ ληφθέντες ἀνερωτώμενοι ὑπὸ τοῦ Κύρου ἔλεγον ὅτι ἀπὸ τοῦ στρατοπέδου εἶεν προεληλυθότες ἐπὶ χιλόν, οἱ δ᾽ ἐπὶ ξύλα, παρελθόντες τὰς προφυλακάς·
“They said they’d gone out from the camp for fodder, and others for firewood, passing beyond their forward guards.”
“They said they’d gone out from the camp for fodder—others for firewood—, passing beyond their forward guards.”
That’s hardly analogous.
I disagree with this guess. I continue to hold that the Greek by itself could mean one of two things. Ordinarily it would mean (1) “The eleven prosekunhsan. Others edistasan,” and we are free to imagine that these unidentified others are also on the scene along with the eleven. (Cf. Vladimir’s original post.) Since that is contextually uninviting, it will mean (2) “The eleven prosekunhsan, but some [of them] edistasan,” as nearly all English translations have taken it. It can’t mean (pace some ancient commentators) (3) “Some of the eleven prosekunhsan, but some of them edistasan” (standing for των δε ενδεκα οι μεν …), and it can’t mean (pace the U.S. Catholics’ NAB and BeDhun) (4) “The eleven prosekunhsan but edistasan” (the Anabasis passage certainly doesn’t justify that). So I think there’s only one viable reading, namely the traditional one.
Even so, the Greek is a little awkward, and so is the sense (for proskunesis is not naturally compatible with doubt). That’s accounted for if οι δε εδιστασαν is intrusive, added to lessen the embarrassing distance between this account and those in the other gospels.
Most of the passages quoted in posts above seem to me quite irrelevant.
This is even more true of the newer linguistic meta-jargon. My view is that when you need a map to read the map, you might as well forget about the map and just explore the territory directly.