Subject: Re: tc-list Li�ge diatessaron question

From: "H.P.S.Bakker" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 23 Mar 1999 17:41:42 -0500

>My question concerns Mt 6.8 in the Liège Diatessaron - want u vader weet
>wale wis u behoeft, eer ghine anebedt (De Bruin, p. 46, l. 25). Do I miss
>something or is the English translation of the edition of De Bruin adding
>something that is not in the Dutch text when it translates 'for your
>Father knows well what ye need before ye pray TO HIM'? Apparently these
>last two words are not in the Dutch text?
>
>Am I right or is there some morphological peculiarity of middle dutch that
>I don't get here, because as a Belgian I know modern dutch, which usually
>is quite enough to understand these texts, but of course is sometimes
>different?

Perhaps it helps if you cut up the scriptio continua further: "eer ghi ne
anebedet." "ghi" is translated with 'ye' and "ne" with 'to him'. In this
case the writing convention follows speech where the unstressed "ne" is
pronounced together with the preceding pronoun.

One should be aware of agglutinising pronouns (which are easily added or
omitted) in other vernacular versions as well. Cf. the same passage in the
Tuscan Diatessaron tradition:

- prima che voi adomandiate (MSS S and R)
- prima che voi l'adomandiate (MS L)
- prima che voi il adomandiate (MSS PT)

I do not think that the variation goes back to different Greek Vorlagen.

Think also of the same passage in modern French: avant que tu ne l' invoque.
Here the addition of the negative element "ne" may cause confusion with a
semi-francophone.

Finally, a caveat for TC-ers consulting the Middle Dutch versions: beware
of the double negation (which still exists in French): "en" does not always
mean 'and'. Cf. Jhn 5.23c in a MS from Brussels:

Die              niet en    eren    den  sone
Those who   (do) not        honour  the  son

die    en  eren    oec   niet  den  vader   diene     ghesent heeft
those      honour  also  not   the  father  who him   sent    has

Please note in this passage another case of "-ne".

(I send a copy or this email to a fellow-Diatessaronite who is not on the
list. August den Hollander is the specialist in Middle Dutch Bible
traditions.)

dr H.P.S. Bakker

Slavic Seminar
University of Amsterdam
Spuistraat 210
1012 VT Amsterdam

tel. +31 20 525 3811
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