34 Iwan M. Whiteley deduces that the reason for their presence is because John ‘...may have retained from the early years of thinking in a Semitic language’4. Charles agrees with Swete on this issue and he even goes as far as saying that John ‘...had never mastered the Greek language of his own day’5. Moulton sug- gests that author failed to revise his work, or his language foreshadows that of the future.6 Beale argues that the anacolutha highlight the presence of an OT allusion.7 Robertson noticed that many of the solecisms occur in appositional clauses8, suggesting that there is an underlying agenda tak- ing place in the text. It appears that John is juxtaposing syntactically and conceptually conflicting clauses, allowing the reader to deduce the exact relationship between the relevant clauses on their own. Callahan says that ‘...the nominative and infinitive construction of Rev 12:7 is indeed bar- baric. This construction, however has a precedent (see LXX Hos 11:13; Eccl 3:15)...’9. Ascribing the term ‘barbaric’ to John’s Greek and the use of the word ‘solecism’ raises important issues. ‘Barbaric’ suggests a text formulated in a fashion where the language is not completely accurate, but the meaning can be generally attained by mentally adjusting the text. The word ‘solecism’ effectively states this. There is a danger with this line of thought in assuming that whenever a grammatical anomaly is present it is an error. Black would be wary of this, for he says ‘...whatever logic resides in language can only be inferred from what has actually happened and not from what should have happened’10. While acknowledging that there can be errors in communication, acceptance of such must be based upon clear evidence. If there is abnormality within the text that cannot be accounted for, there should be caution in regarding it as a solecism when separated by such a great period of time and geography. In Revelation, John adopts syntactical structures that are consistent in their lack of uniformity with the general use of Greek. The repetitive nature of these constructions implies deliberation and therefore suggests the possibility of cohesion within the text. Some however would believe that in spite of the fact that there are regularities in John’s Greek, yet they Swete, The Apocalypse, cxx 4 R. H. Charles, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Revelation of St. John, 5 vol. 1 (Edinburgh 1979) xxi. J. Moulton, A Grammar of New Testament Greek (Edinburgh 1976) 146; J. Moulton, 6 A Grammar of New Testament Greek: Based on W.F. Moulton’s ed. of G.B. Winer´s Gram- mar, vol. 3 (Edinburgh 31963) 314. G. K. Beale, John’s Use of the Old Testament in Revelation (Sheffield 1998) 320-21. 7 Robertson, A Grammar, 413. 8 A.D. Callahan, ‘The Language of the Apocalypse’, HTR 88 (1995) 456. 9 D.A. Black, ‘Discourse Analysis, Synoptic Criticism, and Markan Grammar: Some 10 Methodological Considerations’, in D.A. Black (ed.), Linguistics and New Testament Inter- pretation (Nashville 1992) 92.