Significant αι /ε interchanges?

Stephen Carlson
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Significant αι /ε interchanges?

Post by Stephen Carlson »

RandallButh wrote:The final vowels AI vs. E is one of the most frequent disagreements/mistakes among ancient scribes of the GNT. Meaning was rarely affected because 'third person' subject vs. 2nd or 1st was usually clear.
Usually, but occasionally not. I've looked at about 60 or so of these interchanges between AI and E in Galatians, and these few are the ones which seemed to me to produce grammatically sensible differences, sometimes because there is a neuter object that could be reinterpreted as a subject (I might be over-aggressive on some because context might disambiguate):

Gal 3:3 οὕτως ἀνόητοί ἐστε, ἐναρξάμενοι πνεύματι νῦν σαρκί ἐπτιτελεῖσθαι (“Are you, who got started in the spirit, so senseless as to get finished now in the flesh?”)

Gal 3:7 γινώσκεται ἄρα ὅτι (“then it is known that”)

Gal 4:9 οἷς πάλιν ἄνωθεν δουλεύειν θέλεται (“to which it is wanted to enslave all over again”).

Gal 4:10-11 ἡμέρας παρατηρεῖσθαι ... φοβοῦμαι ὑμᾶς (“I fear you keep days ….”);

Gal 4:12 γίνεσθαι ... δέομαι ὑμῶν (“I beg of you to become”);

Gal 4:18 καλὸν δὲ ζηλοῦσθε ἐν καλῷ πάντοτε (“but you are always being sought well for good”);

Gal 5:10 ὅτι οὐδὲν ἄλλο φρονήσεται (“that nothing else is considered”)

Gal 5:18 οὐκ ἐσται ὑπὸ νόμου (“it will not be under the law”).

Gal 6:15 ἀλλὰ κενὴ κτίσις (“but an empty creation”).

Stephen
Stephen C. Carlson, Ph.D.
Melbourne, Australia
RandallButh
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Re: ἡ ὑποπροφορά

Post by RandallButh »

Did you want to go ahead and filter these yourself, or do you want others to explain?
E.g. Gal 3.3 is clear in context and clearly 'you' [εστε], since ανοητοι is m.pl.,
regardless of how spelled by mss A F G 104 εσται.
Stephen Carlson
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Re: ἡ ὑποπροφορά

Post by Stephen Carlson »

RandallButh wrote:Did you want to go ahead and filter these yourself, or do you want others to explain?
E.g. Gal 3.3 is clear in context and clearly 'you' [εστε], since ανοητοι is m.pl.,
regardless of how spelled by mss A F G 104 εσται.
I'd love it if people chimed in. To be clear, the portions quoted above are the forms that vary from the NA27 text.

Actually, the interchange I was considering in 3:3 is between ἐπτιτελεῖσθαι (01 D* F G 33 1175 1241S) and ἐπτιτελεῖσθε (P46 B A C Ψ 1611 1739 Byz Chrys b d vg pesh hark NA27). It is a real shame this variation unit is not in the NA27 apparatus.

Stephen

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Stephen C. Carlson, Ph.D.
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RandallButh
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Re: ἡ ὑποπροφορά

Post by RandallButh »

It might be nice to repost under something like "significant exegesis with AI and E".
YPOPROFORA doesn't do this justice.
Mark Lightman
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Re: Significant αι /ε interchanges?

Post by Mark Lightman »

ὦ χαῖρε Στέφανε!

Don't forget about 1 Thes 5:1:

περὶ δὲ τῶν χρόνων καὶ τῶν κερῶν, ἀδελφοὶ...

"Now, concerning times and horns, brethren..."

It would be even more fun to do this with iotacisms, e.g. 1 Thes. 5:6

...γρηγορῶμεν καὶ νίφωμεν.

"Let us watch and let us snow."

or Acts 1:1:

ὧν ἤρξατο ὁ Ἱησοῦς πιεῖν τε καὶ διδάσκειν

“The things which Jesus began to drink and teach…"

or Iliad 1:1:

μηνὴν ἄειδε, θεά, Πηληιάδεω Ἀχιλῆος...

"Sing, goddess, about the moon of Achilles…"

Genug shoen. Enough already.
Stephen Carlson
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Re: Significant αι /ε interchanges?

Post by Stephen Carlson »

Mark Lightman wrote:[
or Acts 1:1:

ὧν ἤρξατο ὁ Ἱησοῦς πιεῖν τε καὶ διδάσκειν

“The things which Jesus began to drink and teach…"
All pretty funny, but as far as I know no manuscript (at least in Swanson) makes this mistake, though 2147 spells the word as ποιην.

Stephen
Stephen C. Carlson, Ph.D.
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RandallButh
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Re: Significant αι /ε interchanges?

Post by RandallButh »

Hey, that was pretty nifty to start a new topic and to get the old posts included.
ὦ χαῖρε Στέφανε!

Don't forget about 1 Thes 5:1:

περὶ δὲ τῶν χρόνων καὶ τῶν κερῶν, ἀδελφοὶ...

"Now, concerning times and horns, brethren..."

It would be even more fun to do this with iotacisms, e.g. 1 Thes. 5:6

...γρηγορῶμεν καὶ νίφωμεν.

"Let us watch and let us snow."
This is a great introduction into what I call the 'carrying capacity' of a natural language. Natural languages can tolerate minor ambiguity, but when major ambiguity starts to expand the language will change and adapt, too.

for example, in the first example from Mark,
peri de ton xronon kai keron would be fairly transparent in fluent speech. χρονος and καιρος are part of the same semantic domain and synonyms. Plus, speakers of a language get to hear and feel the accents (like κέρως vs.καιρός) as well as different genre, so they would read this transliteration that I gave as χρόνων καὶ καιρῶν, not the distinct Koine prose χρόνων καὶ κεράτων for 'times and horns'.
One only needs to know that peri ton (hopefully with a high tone rather than with the low tone [grave]) is a genitive according to its context and everything flows. As mentioned, the tone would even clarify the genitive.

These AI/E interchanges, then, are of particular interest because they were part of the natural language in the first century and they were part of the language system and partially determine the carrying capacity. In a sense, AI/E would help to lead speakers to choose the prosaic κεράτων 'of horns' (frequent in LXX, Jos, NT, et al. over the form κερῶν (*κεράων). The KOINH sound change AI=E may have been a contributing factor to the preference of KERATWN over KERWN. Likewise, with οι/υ, the classical contraction for 'sheep' οἶς (*όϝις with waw/digamma, Lat ovis, Eng ewe) lost out to πρόβατον in part because people did not want to walk into a καπηλειον, order οις (lamb), but receive ὑς (pig, χοῖρος)! Certainly not εν Ιουδαιαι.

However, as more sound changes entered the language, its carrying capacity was altered and this can only affect the rest of the language: what was in common use, neologisms, neo-syntactic constructions, etc. This is most frequently viewed with HTA. In the first century HTA was still phonemic and helped to carry some of the language system by differentiating vocabulary and structures like βλέπει vs. βλέπῃ (the first century distinguished these, Machen can eat his heart out). But from p45, 46, 66, 75, and Origen on, HTA went the way of all flesh and the carrying capacity of the language was diminished. Many of the humorous misreadings above and elsewhere are based on HTA. And the notorious unaccented syllable in υμεις ημεις could not be carried at all by the time we reach the miniscule scribal revolution. (9th c)

Anyway, there are true ambiguities with AI/E, like "KENH KTISIS" out of context, and good for study. And we even have NEA available to disambiguate in live speech should the need ever arise. (It has).
I have found it helpful over the years to watch and see how ancient speakers handled such ambiguities and potential ambiguities in their speech. Stephen's list makes for some good discussion if people will chew it over.

In fact, people must chew this over if they want to understand the first century.
RandallButh
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Re: Significant αι /ε interchanges?

Post by RandallButh »

as a second post this morning (don't miss the one above) and coming back to one of Stephen's examples (and the others should probably be discussed individually, too):
Gal 3:3 οὕτως ἀνόητοί ἐστε, ἐναρξάμενοι πνεύματι νῦν σαρκί ἐπτιτελεῖσθαι (“Are you, who got started in the spirit, so senseless as to get finished now in the flesh?”)
The natural way to interpret ἐπτιτελεῖσθαι in context is as a comparison with ἐναρξάμενοι not a complement, so one 'hears/understands' ἐπτιτελεῖσθε part+finite verb describing two processes with the senseless process more salient (finitie verb) as fitting the context.

The other way gets rather convoluted and 'relevance theory' usually drops unnecessary, excessive convolutions in speech and dialogue. Stephen's translation partially hides what the hearer actually processes:
"are you so senseless, beginning in spirit, now in flesh finishing." this comparison has good balance.
"... beginning in spirit in order to finish in flesh" this complement creates unnecessary convolutions.
Mark Lightman
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Re: Significant αι /ε interchanges?

Post by Mark Lightman »

Gal 6:15 ἀλλὰ κενὴ κτίσις (“but an empty creation”).
I got a kick out of this one. It does raise a theological question:

ἆρα μὲν οὖν τὴν παλαιὰν διαθήκην καινοῖ ἢ κενοῖ ἡ καινή?
Does the New Covenant renew or make empty the Old?


The last part of which would of course come out in a MG προφορά as
kenee ee kenee ee kenee.
Just a bit of prophoric pun-ditry. :D
Stephen Carlson
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Re: Significant αι /ε interchanges?

Post by Stephen Carlson »

RandallButh wrote:The other way gets rather convoluted and 'relevance theory' usually drops unnecessary, excessive convolutions in speech and dialogue. Stephen's translation partially hides what the hearer actually processes:
"are you so senseless, beginning in spirit, now in flesh finishing." this comparison has good balance.
"... beginning in spirit in order to finish in flesh" this complement creates unnecessary convolutions.
Yes, the -αι reading is more convoluted, but I was struck here how unusually well attested it was compared with other αι/ε interchanges, which tend to crop up mainly in the usual suspects (F, G, 2464, etc.).

Stephen
Stephen C. Carlson, Ph.D.
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