Can someone point me to further discussion as to how ἦν is being used in the passage from the Septuagint below?
It seems to be used impersonally and complemented by the infinitive dokein? (“There was a seeming, not only in respect to men but even the walls and entire foundation to ring”, i.e., “Not only the men, but the walls and entire foundation seemed to ring”
It’s an odd form of expression, which should mean more than just “it seemed that” but I suspect doesn’t. Perhaps it’s as you say (“There was a seeming”—but why infinitive?), or perhaps “It was possible to think that” (ην impersonal, δοκειν personal, cf. e.g. ην ιδειν), describing the impression that all the ruckus made. I’m not really sure. The whole chapter is written in a distinctive flowing imperial style, highly literate and not without its stylistic quirks (e.g. apodotic δε with the eventually reached main clause in 11 and again in 12). Quite unlike Septuagint style and quite unlike normal koine.
It makes sense to me if he has stopped narrating straight, and is aware of his words as words:
For it wasn’t just “the men approved”, but “even the walls and the entire foundation resounded”.
Or something similar to that. If δοκεῖν had a sentence-level function, I don’t think it would be an infinitive like that.
EDIT: The same works, maybe better, taking δοκεῖν as governing an infinitive instead of absolute, as was suggested in the first post: For it wasn’t just “the men seemed”, but “even the walls and the entire foundation to sound”.
For the seeming to sound was not only the men, but the walls and the whole foundation.
For he was saying not only the men, but the walls and the whole foundation seemed to sound.
The accusative plus infinitive construction puts a statement into “words” in a way similar to (but not the same) as our quotation marks do, and makes it into something that can be marked by an article or serve as the object of a verb of saying. Here we’ve got neither of those, very strangely, but just an accusative + infinitive connected to εἶναι. Since the indication of possibility seems impossible, it looked to me like maybe the author was thinking of the acc. + inf. part of the statement as “words” in a similar way to how it works in more normal expressions.
As far as δοκεῖν possibly being something other than “seem”, I happened to be reading Heraclidae, and had just came across ψηφῳ δοκῆσαν, and so, following that shout, the idea that δοκεῖν might simply describe the men’s actions in expressing an opinion came to mind. In that case, you’d have to take ἠχεῖν parallel to δοκεῖν, rather than governed by it. But that would make it all into a pretty high-faluting expression, and seems unlikely to me now.
Some wild suggestions here, and getting wilder. I think really it’s pretty simple, as I proposed: ην impersonal (as in e.g. παρῆν), δοκεῖν personal (to think, to imagine), followed routinely by acc. & inf. The construction is well paralleled, as I indicated. I probably shouldn’t have called it an “odd” form of expression; it is quite striking, but that’s appropriate enough in context.
Thanks, mwh!
I like what you propose. And that construction (impersonal hn) works well for parallels I’ve seen in Aristides, among others. Thank you again!
Good. I hadn’t previously encountered 3 Maccabees, and I found the elaborately mannered style very interesting. I can’t say it reminds me of Aristides, but no doubt they have features in common, and for all I know may belong to the same era.
Hi, only point to add is that Croy’s commentary on 3 Maccabees (Brill 2006) notes throughout places where the grammar is “garbled” or “confused”, including mixing up finite and infinite forms. Another possibility could therefore be that the author simply made a mistake here, perhaps e.g. trying to make an (incorrect) impersonal periphrastic imperfect with an infinitive rather than participle, and I wonder whether the same imperfect ἦν a few words earlier influenced the form here. But Michael’s reading makes most sense to me of the Greek as it stands, assuming it is correct Greek.
Thanks for chipping in Chad. I didn’t know of Croy’s commentary nor of earlier ones. I see from the GoogleBooks excerpts that in his introduction Croy comments on the “lavish vocabulary and bombastic style" of the book and also on the sentence structure, which is what struck me as especially noteworthy throughout this chapter. I haven’t seen his commentary, but I see no particular reason to think that δοκειν γαρ ην is a mistake (and surely not for a periphrastic imperfect with a participle!).
Hi Michael, yes agreed, and your reading (assuming the Greek is correct) seems to me to be the right one. I was just calling out that Croy noticed syntax errors elsewhere in the text.