“I sing of Rashi” by Shimshon Meltzer

Shimshon Meltzer’s famous poem (1940), so far as I know, never translated in its entirety into English, begins as follows:

אָשִׁירָה לְרַשִׁ״י אָנֹכִי אָשִׁירָה

בִּשְׁנַת תָּ״ו תָּ״ו קוּ״ף לְהֻלַּדְתּוֹ

I sing of Rashi. I sing
on the 900^th anniversary (400 + 400 + 100) of his birth.

Note well: in the first person singular, the so-called cohortative in Hebrew, both ancient and modern, is not necessarily a cohortative. I’m not convinced that the first person singular hortatory subjunctive in ancient Greek is always hortatory either. In the above poem by Meltzer, אקטלה marks the onset of an illocutionary speech act at which point, if one were a pedant, a “hereby” might be added. Virgil starts his Aeneid in the same way, with a “present tense” which has the same force:

arma virumque cano, Troiae qui primus ab oris
Italiam fato profugus Laviniaque venit
litora,

I sing of war and a man, he who from the region of Troy first
arrived, an escapee, by Destiny, to Italy and the Lavinian
coasts;

1^st person (and 1^st person only) present tense “sing” in English is a performative verb. “I sing the body electric” – Walt Whitman.

Isaiah 5:1 and many other passages in the Bible are similar:

אָשִׁ֤ירָה־נָּא֙ לִֽידִידִ֔י

שִׁירַ֥ת דֹּודִ֖י לְכַרְמֹ֑ו

I sing I say  for my friend
my confrere’s  song  for his vineyard.

In short, 1^st person singular אקטלה can be used to mark the onset of a performative act – in the sense of “here-and-now I am doing this.” When so used in ancient Hebrew literature, the Psalms included, translations known to me consistently mistranslate אקטלה. Contra Joüon-Muraoka, the 1^st person singular “cohortative” is not per se a marker of “volitional nuance.”

I will leave it to others to determine whether the so-called 1^st person singular hortatory subjunctives in Matt 7:4; Luke 6:42 are actually such. But in the case of Acts 7:34, an idiomatic translation (of both the Greek and the underlying Hebrew [Ex 3:10]) might go like this:

καὶ νῦν δεῦρο ἀποστείλω σε εἰς Αἴγυπτον.

Now go! I hereby send you to Egypt.

A volitional nuance is possible in this instance, but should not be taken for granted. A nuance of asking permission – “let me” – is out of the question.

In future posts, I will offer excerpts of Meltzer’s poem, text and translation.

Bibliography

Elizabeth Closs Traugott and Richard B. Dasher, Regularity in Semantic Change (London: Cambridge University Press, 2002) 199-200

Comments

[Carl W. Conrad]

I'm not sure about this, John. I'd seek Randall Buth's advice regarding LXX Greek and what may or may not be Semitisms in the GNT texts that you've cited. In Aeneid 1.1 cano is, of course, an indicative, not a subjunctive, although I'd certainly agree that it is "performative." You might raise a comparable question about Vergil's Eclogue 4.1-3 (the "Messianic" eclogue):

Sicelides Musae, paulo majora canamus!
non omnis arbusta juvant humilesque myricae;
si canimus silvas, silvae sint consule dignae.

Here 'canamus' in line 1 is subjunctive and seems hortatory; 'sint' in line 3 would seem to be the comparable third-person jussive.

In Aeneid 6.883-6, we have what appears to be an idiomatic "cohortative" or "hortatory" subjunctive expression with a 'date' used as Koine Greek uses ἄφες and ἄφετε with a subjunctive, cf. Matt. 27:49 οἱ δὲ λοιποὶ ἔλεγον· ἄφες ἴδωμεν εἰ ἔρχεται Ἠλίας σώσων αὐτόν.

[Jeremiah]

I think you mean first person plural

[JohnFH]

Carl,

Yes, of course, cano is indicative. I didn't mean to suggest otherwise.

The common denominator with אָשִׁירָה in Hebrew and "I sing" in English is function, not necessarily form.

Once the function is understood to be performative for a set of 1st person singular examples, the label "cohortative" or "hortatory" no longer fits.

Jeremiah,

In Greek grammars, when examples are given of hortatory subjunctives, a string of first person plurals normally head things up. First person singular subjunctives typically classed as "hortatory," I am arguing, at the very least are not obviously so. The Acts passage is not naturally taken in that way.