Instead of considering the statement as entirely direct speech, which alternates gratingly (to me) with speaker/author viewpoint (though that’s not impossible), could this be καὶ ταῦτ’ ἃ εἶπεν αὐτῇ? (Or καὶ ταῦτα ἃ εἶπεν αὐτῇ if we want to add a letter.) "She told the disciples that ‘I have see the Lord!’ and these things [just related] that he had said to her. We’d need a οτι statement and an object ταῦτα governed by the same ἀγγέλλουσα.
I noticed the the verse today when I heard the NIV’s translation and tried to work it out (it turns out that NIV follows the version from D: “α ειπεν αυτη εμηνυσεν αυτοις”.)
Irons (A Syntax Guide for Readers of the Greek New Testament, 2010) states that this is a mix of direct and indirect discourse “telkling the disciples, I have seen the LOrd and (that) he had said these things to her”
Your Idea of a Rel. Pron. is not new: Ms. D has α instead of ταυτα.
30 tn The first part of Mary’s statement, introduced by ὅτι (hoti), is direct discourse (ἑώρακα τὸν κύριον, heōraka ton kurion), while the second clause switches to indirect discourse (καὶ ταῦτα εἶπεν αὐτῇ, kai tauta eipen autē). This has the effect of heightening the emphasis on the first part of the statement.
I’m not sure I see the heightened emphasis though.
I suppose I’m suggesting that it’s an “inserted statement of fact”, per Smyth 2624. It mentions there, though, that it’s “rare after verbs of saying w. ὅτι”. Notice the Antiphon example ᾔδει ὅτι οὐχ οἷόν τ᾽ ἦν αὐτῇ σωθῆναι, and the past tense.
I’m afraid that I don’t know the grammar terms as well as I should. What I was calling “switch to author viewpoint” should be “switch to indirect speech.” This sort of switch is mentioned in Smyth 2634, though it mentions that it’s rare to go from direct to indirect in N1. And to me, it just reads rough.
ταῦτ᾽ ἃ and ταῦτα would have been written the same in the original. All I’ve changed is breathings. But though this would be the normal elision in Attic, I don’t know about the NT.
I think this is making a mountain out of a molehill, and (not for the first time) such ingenuity is misplaced. ταῦτ᾽ ἃ (?!) and ταῦτα would not have been written the same in the original. We should take the given text as it stands. Everyone knows it’s quite normal in this kind of Greek to have οτι introducing the direct quote, cf. e.g. verse 13 λεγει αυτοις οτι ηραν τον κυριον μου, and I think it would be wrong to supply another οτι with a different function after και. It’s simply:
“Maria the Magdalene goes telling the students ‘I’ve seen the master’ and this is what he’d told her.”
It “reads rough” to Joel (and so it is), and it might not have satisfied Smyth (whose Antiphon sentence is completely different), but this is unexceptional for the gospel, whose Greek is consistently low-level.
Incidentally, there’s a fascinating resurrection scene in the Gospel of Peter, one of a number of gospels that didn’t quite make it into the eventual NT canon.
“… they see three men come forth from the tomb, and two of them supporting one, and a cross following them. And the heads of the two reached to heaven, but the head of him who was led by them overpassed the heavens.”
There was an earlier textkit thread about this.
Happy Easter all (except Eastern Orthodox christians, who have to wait another month)!
Happy Easter. Gospel of John and of Peter are rather different beasts.
But there are multiple things that your English could mean here, and I’d like to be concrete at least about your point. Are you saying that John is using the author’s ταῦτα here, using “and this is what he’d told her” to refer to what the author had just related, that it’s not governed by the ἀγγέλλουσα ὅτι, and that Mary is not here being said to communicate the ταῦτα to the disciples?
Obviously in old times they had also problems with this verse. Some solved it by changing αυτη into μοι (or their greek - now lost - Vorlage solved it that way!):
In the Vetus Latina som Mss: aur b ff2 l q r1 (according to Jülicher);
Vulgate -Jerome: Venit Maria Magdalene adnuntians discipulis quia vidi Dominum et haex dixit mihi;
(Nova Vulgate has: Venit Maria Magdalene annuntians discipulis: “Vidi Dominum!” et quia haec dixit ei)
Τhe Coptic Versions have (according to Horner’s Translations): μοι.
Tatian and Peshitta seem to have αυτη.
If the Latin and Coptic Versions independently had this Veriant-Reading, this would point to an old Vorlage with “μοι”, so interpreting the whole as direct discourse.
I agree completely with a mountain out of the molehill cliche, and that “We should take the given text as it stands.” But if in fact it’s a switch from direct to indirect, then understanding ὅτι from the previous clause, even in a different sense, would be fair – that kind of elipsis is far from uncommon.
Codex Bezae (D) has οτι εωρακεν τον κ̅ν̅ και α ειπεν αυτη εμηνυσεν αυτοις… Where αυτη should certainly be read αὐτῇ. So, and together with Jean’s post on the Vulgate reading, some folks in “old times” had a bit of difficulty with it, so maybe Joel does actually have a point.
“Low level” – certainly lower register if we use Attic as a standard, but simple, clear and easy – just the perfect register for the presumed target audience.
ἔρχεται Μαριὰμ ἡ Μαγδαληνὴ ἀγγέλλουσα τοῖς μαθηταῖς ὅτι ἑώρακα τὸν κύριον καὶ ταῦτα εἶπεν αὐτῇ (or μοι if you prefer that obviously secondary reading).
What I’m saying, to answer Joel’s questions, is (I think) just what the Greek is saying, no more no less. For anything more “concrete” we must resort not to the Greek but to our imagination (whether or not assisted by other post-resurrection accounts; in Matthew a lord’s messenger gives Mary Mag. and the other Mary specific instructions and info, and ends with ιδου ειπον υμιν).
ταυτα is left unspecified. What does it refer to precisely? Who can say? And what are we to imagine the Lord had told her? Again, who can say? (“Lo I am the Lord!” perhaps?) Are these really the best questions to be asking about this narrative? Not if we want definitive answers to them.
As can be seen there’s a middot straight after the nomen sacrum κ̅ν̅ (κύριον), showing where the copyist/exemplar understood where the phrase broke up. Codex Sinaiticus (CSNTM image link) has the same.
According to the NA28th edition apparatus, there were more than a few manuscripts which read the 3rd person ἑώρακεν:
A K L Γ Δ Θ Ψ 078 ƒ1, 13 565. 700. 1241. 1424. 𝑙844. 𝑙2211 Majority Text it syp.h samss boms
So whilst this can be seen as direct to indirect discourse, it would seem someone at an early date objected to it somewhat, and changed the verb to read the smoother 3rd person, as opposed to 1st.
I don’t believe that I agree with mwh here, though I still don’t know for sure if I actually understand him. Mwh’s translation is word-for-word:
“Maria the Magdalene goes telling the students ‘I’ve seen the master’ and this is what he’d told her.”
Unfortunately this makes “this is what he’d told her” a separate statement on the same level of “Maria goes…” I think that this turns the narrative into nonsense of a sort that isn’t found elsewhere in John. The added “that” of the Vulgate and KJV-translation seems necessary to me.
But still, I think there needs to be some explanation for a double-duty direct/indirect ὅτι (if that’s what it is). My current explanation is that the gospel writer was originally thinking something along the lines of:
“ἀγγέλλουσα ὅτι ἑώρακε τὸν κύριον καὶ ταῦτα εἶπεν αὐτῇ”. That is simple and straightforward. Mary is letting them know that she has seen the Lord and that he has said these things. The ταῦτα refers to what the author has just written, and is only meaningful from his viewpoint, but that is perfectly okay since this is no longer quotation.
However, to make the scene more vivid (quite successfully), the gospel writer attempts to put the above direct quotation:
ὅτι ἑώρακα τὸν κύριον…
But then he comes to the ταῦτα. That really can’t be put into direct speech, and has to be left in indirect speech or rephrased.
But why didn’t he just rephrase? This is very strange to leave as is in original composition. But just maybe it’s evidence that he had in mind Luke’s version of the scene. Luke 24:10 ἦσαν δὲ ἡ Μαγδαληνὴ Μαρία καὶ Ἰωάννα καὶ Μαρία ἡ Ἰακώβου καὶ αἱ λοιπαὶ σὺν αὐταῖς ἔλεγον πρὸς τοὺς ἀποστόλους ταῦτα. Here we have that ταῦτα again. Maybe just coincidence, but maybe not.
If you don’t believe you agree with me, so be it. Obviously you can believe what you like. But I’ll point out it’s possible to understand the translation in the same exclusive way that you want to understand the Greek, since “that” is optional in English after “tell.” I think it’s quite possible (as I suggested) that other gospel accounts somehow fed into John’s here. You compare Luke, but I’m sure you can see that Luke is quite different. ταυτα at Lk.24.10 has clear reference to what the two men had told the women (6-7), to which there’s no counterpart here in John.
(The women were not believed either.)
I’ll leave you to your masculine imaginings.
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S. Walch, thanks for your contribution. So 1st-person εωρακα was somewhat liable to become 3rd person. And 3rd-person αυτῃ was somewhat liable to become 1st person μοι. Both banalize the text, but in opposite directions. Neither is at all surprising, and both show a mistaken and probably unconscious desire for consistency.
On ταυτ α, I couldn’t find cases of final α elided like that before another α in the NT. And it really does feel a bit too stodgy for John. I think it is fine as written, now that I think I understand what brought about the awkwardness.
And while my Greek may not be so great, I certainly took in my American with my mother’s milk. In my own southwest American dialect, I need a “that” after “said” when transferring from quoted speech to something else. The following is not ambiguous to me:
“He said ‘I didn’t do it, it was the one-armed man!’ and he was innocent.”
Without “that”, the final phrase must be the author’s. But if it’s ambiguous in someone else’s speech or dialect, then it helps me to understand your point better, if that was what you had in mind.
Hi all, I can’t talk to NT syntax, but just on the spelling point, to draw out what was being hinted above: ταῦτα with the final vowel elided followed by ἃ … becomes ταῦθ᾽ ἃ …, e.g. Republic 506c: οὐδαμῶς γ᾽, ἔφη, ὡς εἰδότα, ὡς μέντοι οἰόμενον ταῦθ᾽ ἃ οἴεται ἐθέλειν λέγειν. This would have shown up in papyri even without punctuation or accents (Θ in place of Τ).
Thanks, Chad. Allen says on pg. 53 of Vox Graeca that (outside stereotyped phrases) this died out by 2nd century AD. He doesn’t footnote the claim, however.
Down the rabbit hole again?! However the verse is to be understood (I maintain it has no unequivocal sense in its original form, hence the textual variations), I hope we can all agree that ταυτα represents ταῦτα. I don’t think even Joel would stand by his earlier claim that “ταῦτ᾽ ἃ and ταῦτα would have been written the same in the original.”
Horrocks discusses it as well, and though he describes Egypt as conservative in regards to the shift to the fricative during the Koine period (see pg. 112-113), he still gives a 2nd century AD example letter (pg. 120-121), BGU 846, with erratic assimilation of word-final aspiration.
If I’ve misread Allen and Horrocks, I’m happy to be corrected. Or if there are better references for me to look into, I’m happy to read them, as always. I haven’t read the papyri, though I hope to one day.
Just chiming in about the Coptic versions. New witnesses published after Horner’s edition show more variety existed.
the “earliest” John (5th c.?, Thompson 1924) and P. Palau Rib. Inv.-Nr. 183 (Sahidic, early 5th c.?, Quecke 1984) give the same text as Horner : Mary the Magdalene came, she told the disciples : “I saw the Lord and he said these to me”
But,
P. Bodmer III (early Bohairic, 4th c.?, Kasser 1958) has: Mary the Magdalene came, she told the disciples “I saw the Lord”, he said these to her
I guess the last part could also be understood as depending on “told” (she told the disciples “I saw the Lord”, [and that] he said these to her) but it doesn’t have to. Actually, I realise I’m not even sure how common/acceptable such a mixture of direct and indirect speech would be. I really should read more Coptic.
Pierpont Morgan M569 (Sahidic, 9th/early 10th c.) has : Mary the Magdalene came, she told the disciples that she had seen the Lord and that he had said these to her
Joel we have to remember that we’re not dealing with an ephemeral ad hoc document such as a barely literate private letter, something that might reflect contemporary local pronunciation, but with something more like a literary text that was transmitted through the centuries, subject to no more than occasional minor textual variation.
It’s still not entirely clear what you’re suggesting, in fact. If you’re proposing that the transmitted ταυτα in this text could represent ταῦθ’ ἃ rather than ταῦτα, that’s simply a non-starter, and you’ll find nothing in Horrocks or Allen to suggest otherwise. And I trust you won’t push the idea that ταυτα really represents ταῦτα ἃ, corrupted in the earliest stages of transmission. I think you’d do well to leave the whole thing alone, as I thought in fact you now had.
If it’s the phonology you’re interested in, the Lautlehre section of Mayser’s old Grammatik der griechischen Papyri gives some data for a slightly earlier period, but I trust you won’t use that as grist for your mill. The BGU text (a private letter, predictably) is at https://papyri.info/ddbdp/bgu;3;846. At one point it has καθον (καθ’ὃν) but at another καταικαστην (=καθ’ἑκάστην), which you can fasten on if you wish but (to come full circle) it would be foolish to do so.
