Kata Markon

["Ted Weeden" <weedent AT atw.earthreach.com>]

Jack Kilmon wrote on Sunday, June 24, 2001 8:28 PM:

> One
> thing comes to my mind that may or may not be significant regarding the
> character
> of classical vs Koine Greek.  This is the tendency for Koine to be a
patois
> in
> various parts of the Greek speaking world even to the point of being
> "pidgin" Greek.
> Somewhere in the last 4 decades or so I recall reading that the use of MEN
> by itself,
> on occasion, left DE unexpressed and understood, something I would not
> expect
> in a more "literate" Greek.  How would this impact the Lukan usage vs the
> Matthean?

Jack, thanks for your reply.  As I noted in my essay, Blass and Debrunner
(_Greek Grammar of the New Testament_) indicate in their discussion of
adversative conjunctions that MEN was used sometimes without DE  in
classical Greek with the same adversative correlative meaning as is the case
with the MEN...DE construction.  Specifically they state (447:4): "To be
sure, the omission of DE in some instances (in Lk and elsewhere) is
excusable or even good classical usage."   Is this what you had in mind in
the above.   Or were you thinking of something else?

Ted