Thanks for the help on Optatives in indirect discourse. This is a rare idiom in NT Greek, found a few times in Luke’s writings.
Yes, here’s an extract from a post of mine in http://discourse.textkit.com/t/euphony-in-romans/13625/1 (Aug.5):
Luke and only Luke uses the optative in the classical way, in historic sequence. (I am bracketing Acts with the so-called gospel of Luke.) This accounts for all instances of ειη and εχοι, εχοιεν, and for the instances of ποιησαιεν, δυναιμην, -ντο, ευροιεν, ευξαιμην, and one of γένοιτο. He also uses opt.+αν, the “potential” optative (τί αν θελοι twice), uniquely(?) among NT authors. It’s well known that Luke’s Greek is more educated than all other gospel-writers’ (canonical and non-canonical alike). It’s striking that such use is totally alien to Paul (unless we count idiomatic ει τuχοι twice in 1 Cor.) and all the other NT letter-writers.
I don’t vouch for its accuracy (it was the result of a very quick search and sorting), and I’d appreciate correction of this or the rest of that post.
I found a note on it in Dawe’s commentary which said φοίτα is conjectured and found in some mss, which would be a flat contradiction in NT textual criticism, where a conjectural reading is one found in no witnesses.
Yes but it’s not necessarily a contradiction. Humanists in the Palaeologan era made conjectures found in contemporary manuscripts. Of course you have to be sure it’s a conjecture rather than an inherited reading. Dawe made an exhaustive study of such manuscripts, and I expect he knows what he’s talking about when he calls it a conjecture. The scholars concerned can often be identified. There are many examples in the Plato tradition too.
—In most ancient manuscripts φοίτα and φοιτᾷ would both be written φοιτα, so it’s really more a matter of interpretation than of “reading” anyway. Same goes for καλει of course.
—Alternatively, it could have been conjectured by a modern scholar and subsequently found to have manuscript attestation. (Editorial etiquette is then to cite the manuscript but not the scholar, which never seems quite fair to me.) That quite often happens with classical texts—not with the NT?—, but that won’t be the case here.
I haven’t made much use of Cooper (though I previously made much use of Kühner) but I too have encountered false references. They’re practically inevitable in a work with so many thousands of references, but maybe not in the numbers you indicate!