RandallButh wrote: ↑July 1st, 2018, 8:54 am
perhaps in some dialect the α sounded like ο?
In antiquity, the various Greek dialects kept 'a' separate from 'o'. The closest vowel to 'a' was 'ω' but 'ω' merged with 'o' before New Testament times and 'a' was always kept distinct from 'o' .
There is one dialect HOWEVER where 'a' and 'o' are confused and that is in "American Seminary Greek, southern and general variety."
Please do not perpetrate this. It is hard on Greek ears, especially when students sing with an smile, unknowingly in good Doric song-language Greek, "bless the female goddess," εὐλογεῖτε τὰν θεάν instead of εὐλογεῖτε τὸν θεόν [pronouncing 'tan thean'
].
Well, that is what I had thought as well. But just to be safe I did a search today and to my surprise I found quite a few examples where ο and α were being swapped.
Matt. 1:6 σολομωνα,σαλωμωνα 01
Acts 3:11 σολομωντοσ,σαλομωντοσ 02
Acts 5:12 σολομωντοσ,σαλομωντοσ 01
Acts 7:47 σολομων,σαλομων 01
Acts 7:47 σολομων,σαλωμων 02
Acts 7:47 σολομων,σαλομων 04
Matt. 3:6 ποταμω,παταμω 032
Matt. 6:7 βατταλογησητε,βλαττολογησητε 05
Matt. 15:11 στομα,σταμα 04
Mark 1:45 παντοθεν,πανταθεν 04
Mark 7:26 συροφοινικισσα,συραφοινεικισσα 03
Mark 7:26 συροφοινικισσα,συραφοινισσα 032
Mark 10:47 ναζαρηνοσ,ναζορηνοσ 05
Mark 14:67 ναζαρηνου,ναζορηνου 05
Luke 4:34 ναζαρηνε,ναζορηναι 05
Mark 13:35 μεσονυκτιον,μεσανυκτιον 03
Luke 11:5 μεσονυκτιου,μεσανυκτιου 05
Luke 3:28 ελμαδαμ,ελμωδαμ 02
Luke 11:51 μεταξυ,μετοξυ 01
John 4:31 μεταξυ,μετοξυ P66
Acts 13:42 μεταξυ,μετοξυ 02
John 18:21 ακηκοοτασ,ακηκοατασ 02
Acts 10:30 απο,οπο P50
Rom. 16:12 κοπιωσασ,κοπιασασ 04
1Pet. 3:6 αγαθοποιουσαι,αγαθαποιουσαι P72
There also were about 5 other cases where the scribe had put down one and then corrected it to the other. Not to mention scores of other cases that I omitted if the difference was found in the word ending. So coming from such a wide variety of manuscripts, it appears to me that they must have sounded a lot closer to each other than I thought. How do you account for this?