[B-Greek] Luke 1:8-9 What do these two clauses modify?

John Sanders jfs at jfsanders.com
Mon Mar 12 07:26:52 EST 2007


I send this reply not as instructions on how to interpret text, nor as a 
correction to harold Holmyard, but rather as how I interpret text.  
Consequently you probably need to bear with my extended narrative and if you 
do so, then you can tell me if my method is of any value to you or not.

I do not study the GNT to translate it into English, I read the GNT in Greek 
and hope that I can understand it in Greek.  Consequently, you will not get 
from me an English translation so much as my thoughts in English of how I 
think the Greek is to be understood.

I (attempt to) read Greek as if it is a living language.  I take it in one 
word at a time and put the parts together as I go along with the intent of 
making sense of the phrases when I come to the end of the phrase.

First, though, a warning; there are forms in the Greek in which there is no 
corresponding form in English and there are vocabulary terms in Greek where 
there are no corresponding terms in English.  A slight commentary is 
required when I come to these items.

So, with these two verses (and I know your question is not related to the 
whole of the verses, but bear with my for my thinking process here), I begin 
as:

I happened, it occurred, it exists, we have a word in a form (middle) that 
does not exist in English and in which there is no one to one mapping from 
the Greek domain to the English domain.  We know from a previous verse that 
there is a definite time frame involved (during the days of King Herod), it 
is in the Aorist form, so we can think of it as having occurred or existed 
at that time.  I then read the conjunction, which never is the first word of 
a phrase.

Here we arrive at a preposition.  This is a signal, and since it follows a 
verb, I will take the prepositional phrase as an adverbial expansion of the 
preceding verb.  The preposition is associated with a verbal form 
(infinitive) used as a noun form here.  The verbal form of this word does 
not have an equivalent in English.  If it were in English, we would have the 
verb “to priest”.  So I know it is something that priest do, it is their job 
of doing.  So I have “and it was in his priesting” when I come across a 
second prepositional phrase “in the order of his day”.  Then we come across 
an adverb, which I arbitrarily will assume it has a similar role as a 
preposition, “before God”.  And we come again to another prepositional 
phrase, “according to the custom of the priest(hood)”.  It is at this point 
we arrive at the verb.

As a side note, I feel comfortable with this way of speaking or writing, it 
is how Chinese handles these issues.  Now I know that there is no 
relationship between Chinese and Greek, but I feel comfortable with the 
procedure.

The verb also does not have an equivalent in English.  Chanced may be 
alright, or “he won the lottery”, anything that tells us he was selected by 
some random means of choice.  So he had the chance to, and we come to 
another verbal form in which there is no exact English equivalent, burning 
incense as a priestly duty here.  But that is what he gets, going into the 
temple of the Lord (to do that priestly duty).

Now I am doing all this thinking in Greek and coming to some sense of what 
it means, but I really do not know what modifies what or anything really 
grammatical about this passage yet.  Normally that is the extent of my 
grammar analysis.  Occasionally we do need to understand some passage in 
grammatical terms to explain either to ourselves or to others.  I was at a 
company I work with quite often when the assistant asked me to help her.  
She told me that she knows all the vocabulary and understands the grammar, 
but she did not understand a specific passage.  I told her that I was no 
stranger to that predicament myself.  I looked at the sentence that bothered 
her, told her that I can understand her difficulty, and made a first order 
parsing of the order of things, and she immediately came to an understanding 
of the meaning.

How I would parse this phrase, Luke 1:8 & 9, is that following the initial 
verb we have four prepositional or adverbial phrases expanding on “it was”, 
or “it came about”, or “once upon a time”, they are parallel and state:

	In his priesting
	In the order of his day
	Before God
	According to the custom of the priest(hood)

Then we come to the main verb and the focus of this sentence.

So, to answer your specific question, in my way of understanding, there are 
four parallel introductory statements being made prior to the main part of 
the sentence.  Greek is not English and English is not Greek.  The 
translations that I have seen will have “before God” tailing either “in his 
priesting” or “in the order of his day” (using an apropriate translation of 
those phrases, of course).  I do not think this is incorrect and I also do 
not think it is incorrect as to any specific order, because this is more a 
matter of English than it is Greek.

And so if I was going to translate, and translation is not my skill set, I 
would render it thus,

And it came about in his priestly duties, in the order of his course, before 
the Lord, according to the customs of the priesthood, he was selected to 
light the incense (when he) entered into the temple of the Lord.

My thoughts.

John Sanders
Suzhou, China

Jonathan Robie wrote:
>I'm working my way slowly through Luke right now, and I have questions 
>about
what two clauses modify. Here's the text:
>
>08 EGENETO DE EN TWi hIERATEUEIN AUTON EN THi TAXEI THS EFHMERIAS AUTOU 
>ENANTI
TOU QEOU, 09 KATA TO EQOS THS hIERATEIAS ELACE TOU QUMIASAI EISELQWN EIS TON
NAON TOU KURIOU,
>
>My first question involves ENANTI TOU QEOU. Should I read this together 
>with
the clause immediately before, "EN THi TAXEI THS EFHMERIAS AUTOU ENANTI TOU
QEOU", or does it modify the earlier text, "EN TWi hIERATEUEIN AUTON ... 
ENANTI
TOU QEOU"? Or is it ambiguous?
>

HH: It seems clear to me that EN THi TAXEI THS EFHMERIAS AUTOU is
modifying hIERATEUEIN. So does ENANTI TOU QEOU go better with
hIERATEUEIN or with the prepositional phrase EN THi TAXEI THS EFHMERIAS
AUTOU? Standing before God and ministering before God are common OT ideas:

1Sam. 2:18 But Samuel ministered before the LORD, being a child, girded
with a linen ephod.

Deut. 10:8 At that time the LORD separated the tribe of Levi, to bear
the ark of the covenant of the LORD, to stand before the LORD to
minister unto him, and to bless in his name, unto this day.

Jer. 35:19 Therefore thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel;
Jonadab the son of Rechab shall not want a man to stand before me for
ever.

HH: So there is a strong presumption in my mind that ENANTI TOU QEOU
modifies the verb. ENANTI TOU QEOU seems more functional with the verb.

>I have a similar question about KATA TO EQOS THS hIERATEIAS - should I read
this as "KATA TO EQOS THS hIERATEIAS ELACE TOU QUMIASAI", or perhaps "EN THi
TAXEI THS EFHMERIAS AUTOU ENANTI TOU QEOU, 09 KATA TO EQOS THS hIERATEIAS"? 
Is
there anything in the grammar that should tell me?
>

HH: I believe the comma after "ENANTI TOU QEOU," is there to tell us
that the first option is preferred. The comma divides the foregoing
words from those that follow it. One reason to prefer this division is
that it gives more functionality to the phrase KATA TO EQOS THS
hIERATEIAS. The second alternative would have both hIERATEUEIN and
hIERATEIAS in the same clause, which seems somewhat redundant. Also,
with the second alternative we would have a string of four prepositional
phrases without a break. This is possible but ordinarily would be
somewhat clumsy.

Yours,
Harold Holmyard

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