Luke 12:20. Who are "they"?

Greek Koine and Biblical and Medieval Greek
1

Ἄφρων, ταύτῃ τῇ νυκτὶ τὴν ψυχήν σου ἀπαιτοῦσιν ἀπὸ σοῦ

Solution 1) Modern Bible translators mostly like to solve this by pretending that the ἀπαιτοῦσιν isn’t there.

But here are two others ideas that occur to me:

Solution 2) The Seikilos epitaph has a parallel use, with personified Time serving as the subject: τὸ τέλος ὁ χρόνος ἀπαιτεῖ. Still, what sort of “they” would God have in mind?

Solution 3) The easiest reading for me is to understand it as Luke “Eat the Rich” Evangelist, MD, describing a group of human agents. That is, a group of men who will murder the rich man, presumably for his money.

2

Why not take ἀπαιτοῦσιν impersonally, like the λέγουσιν in Luke 20:41?

3

That’s the way Luther understood an translated it.

4

Examples of true impersonals:

Eng: It’s raining, Ger: es regnet, Gr: ὕει.
Eng: It has to, Ger: es muss, Gr: δεῖ

λέγουσιν in Luke 20:41 is an “occasional impersonal”. It means “people say” or “they say”. Luther translates “sagen sie”, but he could have said “man sagt”. Unlike true impersonals, the subject of an occasional impersonal is amorphous and unspecified, but not impossible.

Luther very correctly translated Textus Receptus Luke 12:20: “diese Nacht wird man deine Seele von dir fordern”. In English, “wird man fordern” means “one will demand” or “they will demand.” This keeps the statement just as odd in the German as it is in the Greek. The only difficulty with his translation is that he is translating the Textus Receptus αἰτεῖν instead of ἀπαιτεῖν.

Douay-Rheims in 1582 also correctly translated “they require”, Tyndale, even better, “they fetche awaye thy soule agayne”. His Textus Receptus Greek would have had αἰτεῖν, so his (correct) “agayne” must come from Jerome’s (correct) “repetunt”.

It is the King James tradition, and everything following as near as I can tell, NASB, ESV, NIV, and so on, that get this wrong. (With the interesting exception of the Jehovah’s Witnesses GNT, though that is marred by αἰτεῖν again, without the excuse of Textus Receptus.) The KJV tradition here stomps all over the the occasional impersonal and improperly turns the construction into a passive. KJV: “thy soul shall be required”. It makes the statement plain and simple and hides the central oddity of the Greek.

Out of all these, the only proper English translation, matching the occasional impersonal and the ἀπαιτεῖν is Tyndale’s.

[Yet, the question of the the thread remains, who are “they”? What is the mental conception about death that lies behind this statement? Who would “take a soul back”? And it seems very close to Seikilos, also 1st century.]

5

You are right, it’s not an impersonal subject but an indefinit subject (Duden 4: Grammatik).

But I think Luthers Translation isn’t odd:
(my Paraphrase:)
“Your soul will be taken tonight, and you are worrying about your possessions?”

6

Your paraphrase eliminates the odd part. Wird man fordern is “one will demand” or “they will demand.”

And it gets really strange when you have to translate that ἀπαιτεῖν, which Luther did not have in the Greek version that he was working from.

7

Luther used the Erasmus-Edition 1519.

The Erasmus-Edition 1516 (https://archive.org/details/GRCERAS_DBS_HS/Greek-(1516)-Erasmus-New-Testament/page/156/mode/1up) and his Edition 1519 (https://archive.org/details/GRCERAS_DBS_HS/Greek-Latin-(1519)-Erasmus-Greek-Latin-NT/page/153/mode/1up) had απαιτουσιν απο σου.
The Luther-Edition of 1545 has “Du narr / Diese nacht wird man deine seele von dir foddern / Vnd wes wirds sein / das du bereitet hast”.

You omit “von dir”, in that case his Translation seems to be odd, but the English Translation of the Lutrher text would be “they demand your oul from you …”, and I don’t think this to be odd or wrong.

8

Thank you for correcting me on his Greek source. I had made an assumption about Receptus from the variant in the apparatus and the German translation. Since ἀπαιτοῦσαν is Luther’s source, it becomes very hard for me to say why he didn’t translate with zurückfordern then. Maybe Luther was misled by popular Greek in the 16th century. In modern 21st century Greek anyway, απαιτώ is just “demand”.

I didn’t omit “von dir”. It’s there in my post.

If you don’t think ἀπαιτοῦσιν, “they demand back” or “they demand to be returned” is odd, then maybe you can answer the question of the thread: who can “they” be? Spirits? Angels? God speaking of himself in 3rd person? Other humans? (And why ἀπ-αιτοῦσαν?) The soul was somewhere before the rich man had it? The Gospel did not use not a passive or impersonal construction. For an occasional impersonal, or indefinite subject, as you say, we should normally be able to give specific possibilities. (Compare the “λέγουσιν” that you brought up.)

9

According to my Dictionaries (Schneider 1797, Jacobitz, Passow, Pape, LSJ, Brill) απαιτεω means “ demand back” and “demand, require”. In the last sense it is a demand/request You. cannot refuse (like the demand to pay taxes!).

Luther knew the meaning “demand back” (Luke 6:30 “voddere wider”).

But here in 12:20 he took it as the demand in the second sense: They will demand Your life/soul (and you cannot refuse to give it)

Who are “They” : hat’s an exegetical question (not my thing: I am an atheist).

Regarding the Plural:
Some commentators say it’s probably a semitic-influenced impersonal Plural, that is equivalent to a (in Greek more usual) passive construction.

10

Addition:

why απ-αιτεω instead of αιτεω: the first you can’t refuse, the second you can.

11

Our personal beliefs about God do not come to bear on understanding whether or not the language here is being used in a manner consistent with the worldview of the author. It is something that we expect to ask of any author, and it is not a religious question to evaluate whether the Evangelist here has taken over the (non-Christian) popular language of his time about death (ie., τὸ τέλος ὁ χρόνος ἀπαιτεῖ) without really noticing the inconsistency with the Judeo-Christian system.

And because the presence or lack of this inconsistency is precisely what would make this odd or not, a statement that it is “not odd” is just as much an exegetical opinion as is my statement the other way that you object to.

It would be easier to go over Greek examples than dictionary summaries, as glosses are very easy to misinterpret.

In LSJ I.a, for example, where this fits, there are really only two senses to all of the examples: “restitution”, and “claiming” what is one’s own by right. Though this can sometimes be hard to see if you don’t look at the sources. [Aside: In general, not having gone back to the sources is a nasty habit of the people who put together Brill. Though I don’t claim anything specific about their ἀπαιτέω article.]

Andocides is quoted by the LSJ in a way that, out of context, does make it look like ἀπαιτεῖν is distinguished from αἰτεῖν simply as a “demand that cannot be refused”:

εἰ μὲν βούλεσθε, αἰτῶ, εἰ δὲ μὴ βούλεσθε, ἀπαιτῶ

However, in the context of the passage, he’s actually asking for what has already been given him (and using the ἀπαιτέω τινά τι form): Ἃ γάρ μοι … ἔδοτε, … ταῦθ’ ὑμᾶς, εἰ μὲν βούλεσθε, αἰτῶ, εἰ δὲ μὴ βούλεσθε, ἀπαιτῶ. He’s going to stand on his rights if they make him.

Other examples from I.a that perhaps require some explanation:

D.18.245 ἧς ἔμ’ ἀπαιτεῖς εὐθύνας (claim the account they can expect of him)
Arist. de An.408a18 ἀπαιτήσειε δ’ ἄν τις τοῦτό γε καὶ παρ’ Ἐμπεδοκλέους (claim the explanation they should expect)
And notice that E.Supp.385. includes “πρὸς χάριν” in the original context

12

In the light of the decision of almost every Bible translator, past and present, to go for the passive voice in English in this verse (Luke 12:20), it would be easy to assume that Luke’s use of the 3rd person plural with the verb in the active voice must have been an idiomatic variant for expressing the passive, analogous to the colloquial English “They have caught the spy and sentenced him to a long jail term.” In choosing an English construction such as this, the speaker conveys that he has seen no need to identify the individuals who did either the catching or the sentencing. Instead, he focuses on the fate that befell the spy, which would legitimize recasting the statement in the passive voice without any loss of meaning: “The spy has been caught and sentenced to a long jail term.”

However, if this were the case, I would expect to find it mentioned in Siebenthal’s grammar. In fact Luke 12:20 is listed in his index, but only for what he calls the “possessive dative” τίνι in the question, ἃ δὲ ἡτοίμασας, τίνι ἔσται; Neither have I found anywhere any general treatment of an active-for-passive verb form.

This observation leads me to ask two supplementary questions. First, is it fair criticism to suggest that Siebenthal ought to have included a mention, however brief, of Luke’s use of ἀπαιτοῦσιν in this verse?

Second, can this be the sole instance, in the whole of the LXX and the NT, of a conjectural 3rd person plural active-for-passive of this kind?

13

The indefinitie Subject in Lk 12:20 is mentioned in Robertson 1934, Page 392 (https://archive.org/details/grammarofgreekne00robe_3/page/392/mode/2up) and in Debrunner-Blass-Funk 1961 Paragraph 130 Note (2) (https://archive.org/details/bdf-a-greek-grammar-of-the-new-testament-and-other-early-christian-literature/page/72/mode/2up).

14

Addition: Zerwick 1963 page 1-4 (“The use of the Plural”: https://archive.org/details/biblicalgreek0000unse/page/n17/mode/2up. : To Borrow for 1 hour!)

15

New Testament Grammars have very little justification to exist outside of a religious belief that this collection of books of fairly varied language and style and authorship has some sort of grammatical unity imposed by God. This is not an idea that my own faith compels me to subscribe to. But let’s see what they have to say.

–

The Robertson link doesn’t call it a passive at all. It claims 1) that Mathew 2:20 is an example of plural for singular, to “purposely conceal the identity of the person referred to” and that “the same principle applies” for Luke 12:20.

Matthew 2:20 is probably plural for singular, but it is not concealing anybody’s identity. Herod was mentioned by name to Joseph in verse 2:13, and he has again been mentioned in verse 19. And in Luke 12:20, whose identity is being concealed precisely? God? If so, then Robertson’s answer to this thread is that “‘they’ in Luke 12:20 refers to God.”

–

The second link (DBF) makes exactly the same claim that “they” refers to God, but points us to Luke 6:38 and 16:9. In both cases that is debatable. Many people have read the plural of 6:38 to refer to mankind, and the old translations, made before the habit of theological smoothing of corners got quite so ingrained, all referred to “men” or “they” here.

16:9 borders on the silly as a citation, as the reader immediately discovers if he reads on to 16:22 where the subject of ἀπενεχθῆναι is specified. Luke’s heavenly bestiary is a bit more inclusive.

–

Zerwick’s discussion is very good and he cites another verse, Luke 12:48, for the same claim, though made somewhat less definitely than by the earlier grammars, that “they” is God. Yet Luke 12:48 is a general application of a parable and hardly stands for “God.” And it is a mystery to me why he would bring up Luke 23:31 for comparison, even with a “?”. Perhaps someone else has a guess.

–

But I’m happy that Jean has put forward an answer now: “They” is “God”. That is a very religious and orthodox answer, of course, so it is hard to dispute with gusto. But I would suggest instead that Luke’s heavenly taxonomy here (see again 16:22) is somewhat more expansive than that of the very orthodox Protestants that he has cited.

16

Zerwick was a Catholic (Jesuit).

17

Ah, thank you. I tried to find a little bit about him, but I was silly enough to think that Innsbruck was German, not Austrian.

As I said, I liked his discussion best by far, though that Luke 23:31 citation remains very puzzling. Surely no one interprets ποιοῦσιν as referring to a singular subject? Of course, I made a recent thread on that verse, with some citations on the peculiar dative used there: http://discourse.textkit.com/t/luke-23-31/20381/1

18

Just looking at text and without knowing anything about the theological context, or the any context for that matter, I read the passage like it was a metaphor for a loan. Life is a loan, and sooner or later the creditors want you to pay back. The way I see, we are not meant to think too much about who “they” are.

Whether Hebrew usage is relevant here or not is beyond my competence.

19

NA28 and Kittel Theological Dictionary (Lemma : απαιτεω) say that Lk 12:20 refers to LXX Sap. (σοφια σαλομονος) 15:8 :
The LXX uses a Passive: το της ψυχης απαιτηθεις χρεος (Rahlfs II, 368) (when the soul, which was lent him is demanded back; A new english translation of the Septuagint, 2007, 710).

In that case it’s clearly God, when Lk 12:20 uses “they”.

20

Well, we’ve gotten to “demand back” and an implied subject at least, I should be happy…

Is the agent really specifically conceived of as God in the Wisdom verse? The τὸ τῆς ψυχῆς ἀπαιτηθεὶς χρέος is even more similar than Luke 12:20 to τὸ τέλος ὁ χρόνος ἀπαιτεῖ of Seikilos, where the subject is not God, but apparently an impersonal force.

Interesting to find this language in the two parts of our Bible collection most heavily influenced by Greek thought, Luke/Acts and Wisdom of Solomon. Here in Luke 12:20, of course, God is the one speaking to the man, making the claim that he refers to himself with this quasi-impersonal. Surely that would be an entirely unique use?

The idea of a soul being lent and requested back from man is much more compatible with the Platonic conception of the soul than the Jewish. Our sometimes Euripides-quoting author of Luke/Acts may have been an interesting guy.