Negation in Ancient Greek

When is a not a not and when is a not not a not

I wanted to call today's post this, but I knew I would regret that when searching for my own post in 3 years' time.

Specifically, what do you make of 'double' negation? Do two negatives make a positive? Sometimes...

Since I like to pick on New Testament grammars for being bad, here's some:

Duff: "Note: In Greek, a sentence is either negative or not. If it is negative (i.e. it contains οὐ or μη), then other suitable forms in the sentence will also be in the negative. That is, in Greek two negatives make a negative, not as in English where two negatives make a positive" (Duff, The Elements of New Testament Greek, 150. My current least-favourite NT Greek book)

I looked at Mounce, Decker, Athenaze, and Mastronarde, and couldn't find any discussion of these. Perhaps I was bad at searching, or their indices are substandard. I couldn't find a discussion of this in Wallace either. There's only so many textbooks I can be bothered to search through. So, enough of that...

The Rule

"If there are two or more negatives in one clause, they cancel each other if (and only if):

• the second negative is simple, i.e. not a compound form;
• both negatives belong to the same predicate"

Say a big thank you to The Cambridge Grammar of Classical Greek (56.3, p648). CGCG gives some fancy examples, I'm going to give you very straightforward ones from the New Testament.

Example 1: Mark 3:27a 

ἀλλʼ οὐ δύναται οὐδεὶς εἰς τὴν οἰκίαν τοῦ ἰσχυροῦ εἰσελθὼν τὰ σκεύη αὐτοῦ διαρπάσαι (THGNT)

But no-one is able to enter into the house of the big beefy guy and ransack his stuff.

The first negative is simple, the second negative is a compound, οὐδείς, and so it specifies and strengthens the first. This is the classic English double negative:

"I didn't say nothing", i.e. οὐκ εἶπον οὐδέν

Perfectly good Greek there.

But let's flip this example, and I'm going to simplify the Greek just a little:

ἀλλʼ οὐδεὶς εἰς τὴν οἰκίαν τοῦ ἰσχυροῦ εἰσελθὼν τὰ σκεύη αὐτοῦ οὐ διαρπάζει

Now the second negative (a) belongs to the same predicate, (b) is simple. Now I'd translate: but no-one enters the tuff bloke's house guy and does not ransack his stuff.

Right, now the scope of negation differs, it sounds like it's a rule that if you go into the strong guy's house, you have to steal his stuff. That's double negation creating a positive.

Example 2: Mark 5:37

καὶ οὐκ ἀφῆκεν οὐδένα μετʼ αὐτοῦ συνακολουθῆσαι εἰ μὴ τὸν Πέτρον καὶ Ἰάκωβον καὶ Ἰωάννην τὸν ἀδελφὸν Ἰακώβου.

And he did not permit anyone to accompany him, except Pietro and Jacopo and Gianni, Jacopo's bro.

Here the second negation is compound, it emphasises and specifies the general negation that proceeds. Let's flip it:

καὶ οὐδένα μετ' αὐτοῦ συνακολουθῆσαι οὐκ ἀφῆκεν

And he allowed no-one not to accompany him.

Here the same predicate is involved, but the compound is first, the simple negation follows, and so they cancel out and it sounds like Jesus won't let anyone opt-out of the experience (this is when he goes into a mourning house and raises the dead girl).

Example 3

I made this one up, but it helpfully shows when you might use this kind of specifying double negation:

οὐκ ἦν ἄνθρωπος ἐκεῖ, οὐδὲ ἐγὼ οὐδὲ ἄλλος

There wasn't a person there, not I nor another.

Here it's compound negations, after the first one, and they are clarifying and specifying.

οὔτε ἀνήρ τις οὔτε γυνή τις οὐκ ἦν

Neither a certain man nor a certain woman were not there.

Here instead the negations cancel out, and we're saying something more like, "wink wink, nudge nudge, you know who I am talking about, both he and she were indeed there".

What if I told you there were instances where you had triple negation?

I feel like the above makes a lot of sense. And once you grasp the rule, you'll stop worrying so much about negations, there's a clear pattern to these and you probably figured it out intuitively (don't drag me back into a discussion about grammar and learning!). But there's one case I want to talk about that personally does my head in. CGCG files this under "The infinitive with Verbs of Preventing and Denying" (s51.34f, p599f)

There's a nice example of this in the Italian version of Athenaze, ch 26, Ο ΦΘΟΝΟΣ ΤΩΝ ΘΕΩΝ, where Filipe says this (talking about the death of Kroisos' son:

νῦν δὴ δὲ περὶ τοῦ θανάτου τοῦ υἱοῦ ἀνεγίγνωσκον, καὶ οὐχ οἷός τ’ ἦν μὴ οὐκ οἰκτῑ́ρειν αὐτὸν καὶ δακρῡ́ειν.

This is a negated construction that is similar to a verb of preventing (because here we are talking about being unable to not do something; this is hiding in CGCG 51.37)

Just now I was reading about his son's death, and I couldn't not pity him and weep.

The construction here does make some sense, in that a verb of preventing typically takes a μὴ + infinitive: ἀπεῖπεν μὴ αὐτὴν ἀπιέναι he forbid her to leave. But the with the addition of the οὐ to the matrix verb, the prevented/denied verb (which is now not prevented, takes μὴ οὐ.

Not to be mistaken for the οὐ μή + subjunctive which expresses emphatic denial, οὐ μὴ γεύσωνται θανάτου (Mark 9:1) they will certainly not taste death.

Well, that's all I have for you on negation in Ancient Greek. Questions? Comments? Tricky cases? At least, I hope, the logic of when double negation cancels and when it emphasises/specifies/clarifies is at least a little clearer.