I think πρὸς σὲ goes with ἐστιν rather than with ποιῶ . So I would translate as follows:
He said, Go into the city to an acquaintance and tell him, The Teacher says, My appointment with you is near . I will observe the Passover with my disciples .
I’ve tried reading it the other way but it doesn’t make sense to me:
He said, Go into the city to an acquaintance and tell him, The Teacher says, My hour is near. With you I will observe the Passover with my disciples .
It renders both sentences unintelligible, especially the second one. I can’t honestly bring myself to translate πρὸς σὲ as “at your house/place.”
No Joel you’re right. It’s known as a “pregnant” construction. The motion implied by the prepositional phrase precedes the action of the main verb. Cf. e.g. Mk.13.9 εις συναγωγας δαρησεσθε.
It seems to me to be the equivalent of παρὰ σοί, apud te in Latin (which is precisely how Jerome rendered it). However, I’m curious about your curiosity. Do you meant that the usage of word itself is curious, or that’s its presence in the narrative is curious?
The difference is that in Latin that’s a well attested idiom for “at your house.” The same is true of the French preposition chez for example, as in “to the house of.” Hence chez moi – at my house, chez lui – at his house, chez le boucher – at the butcher’s shop, etc.
When does the Greek πρὸς ever function like this to mean “-- house of” in the GNT, and indeed in Koine literature ?
προς σέ ~ παρα σοί: yes undoubtedly but the fact that it’s the one and not the other needed to be explained.
τον δεῖνα: Both. This is probably not the best place to discuss but I trust you’ll agree it’s very odd (all the more so if Mark came first, but that’s by the way). I haven’t looked up Jerome.
Could this be an outline for some early liturgy/passion play, one that would use the participant’s name? (Perhaps the name of whoever was hosting the communion meal.)
But, more prosaically, what’s wrong with understanding δεῖνα as a particular person that Jesus had in mind, but whose name the Gospeler did not know or choose not to report. “Go into the city, to so-and-so.”
At Jesus dixit: Ite in civitatem ad quemdam, et dicite ei: Magister dicit: Tempus meum prope est, apud te facio Pascha cum discipulis meis.
Not so sure that I agree, but I’d like to see you unpack it. As a general principle, although Matthew has more material overall, he tends to be more sparse in his recounting of the same events that Mark also reports, and I’ve always looked at this as just such an example. But if you have another explanation I’d love to hear it.
Had the author of Matthew wanted to say “I will eat the Passover meal with my disciples at your house” he would have written something along the following lines: ποιῶ τὸ πάσχα μετὰ τῶν μαθητῶν μου ἐν τῇ οἰκίᾳ σου
Jerome is unreliable in matters pertaining to Greek grammar and translation. For instance even though the Latin versions of his day as a rule rendered μονογενὴς as “unicus” / “only” he translated the term as "unigenitus’ / “only-begotten” only in the six verses where it refers to Jesus, retaining the Latin “unicus” for when the word does not refer to Jesus.
The problem with that is that the Gospeler presents the words as Jesus’ own.
Jerome’s ad quemdam (thanks Barry) is fudge. It doesn’t really correspond to προς τον δεινα (it’s not προς ανθρωπόν τινα), which should mean something more like jeidsath’s “to so-and-so.” Do you have an explanation Barry?
quīdam, quaedam, quoddam, and subst. quiddam, pron. indef., a certain, a certain one, somebody, something
Lewis, C. T., & Short, C. (1891). Harpers’ Latin Dictionary (p. 1511). New York; Oxford: Harper & Brothers; Clarendon Press.
δεῖνα , ὁ, ἡ, τό (Thu., Aristoph. et al.; pap, Aq., Sym.) a pers. or thing one cannot or does not wish to name, so-and-so, somebody, in our lit. only masc. a certain man Mt 26:18.
Arndt, W., Danker, F. W., & Bauer, W. (2000). A Greek-English lexicon of the New Testament and other early Christian literature (3rd ed., p. 215). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Coming up with an alternate suggestion as to how the writer might have expressed the concept does not mean that what Jerome rendered was a “fudge.” It appears to me to be an adequate rendering. δεῖνα might be an Atticism, but it also appears not infrequently in the papyri.