An Exploration of Conditional Clause Exegesis 373 Thus in Homer’s epics there are proportionally around seven times as many optatives as in the Biblical material(41), and in Homer the numbers of subjunctives and optatives are relatively close (42). Porter suggests that the reduction in use of the optative took place because “speakers felt that they could do the same thing the optative did by using the subjunctive, but without having to worry about the rather awkward paradigm” (43). The optative might thus be described as a literary luxury (44), for which many writers substituted the subjunctive. Consequently when the optative was used in Hellenistic Greek (apart from idiomatic usage), it was chosen deliberately, for special effect. It communicates contingency with sharpened focus. The subjunctive, on the other hand, cannot be seen as necessarily implying less contingency. It allows for such an interpretation, but as a function of the context, not based on use of the subjunctive per se. As Wallace points out, the subjunctive may be used to express: “mere possibility or even hypothetical possibility (as well as, at other times, proba- bility)”(45). Figure 1 represents diagrammatically the shift in the semantic fields of these moods (46). Subjunctive Optative Classical Greek Less More contingent contingent Subjunctive Optative Hellenistic Less More Greek contingent contingent (41) Cf. DANA – MANTEY, Manual Grammar, 173. (42) WALLACE, Grammar, 699, suggests that a marked drop can also be seen between the Septuagint and the New Testament but this conclusion is harder to sustain, given the considerable variation within both documents. For example, in Job, of 1998 finite verbs, 124 (6.21%) are optatives, but of the 3018 finite verbs in the minor Prophets, only 3 (0.10%) are optatives. (43) PORTER, Idioms, 59. (44) Cf. ROBERTSON, Grammar, 936. (45) WALLACE, Grammar, 462. See also BOYER, “Third (and Fourth) Class Conditions”, 170-171. (46) Cf. WALLACE, Grammar, 462. MOULE, Idiom Book, 23, also notes how the domains of the two moods overlap.