b-greek digest: March 24, 1999

David C. Hindley DHindley at compuserve.com
Thu Mar 25 01:58:09 EST 1999


Message text written by "Biblical Greek"

>1 - Is there a Greek word for "wrist" that could have been used here to
more
clearly indicate where the nails were driven?

2 - If there is a Greek word for wrist and it wasn't used, are there
linguistic/stylistic reasons for using the more common word for hand?

3 - Are there any NT or LXX references where "CHEIR" clearly refers to the
wrist or arm and not just the hand?

4 - Is there any other "textual" support for the nails penetrating the
wrists rather than the palms of the hands?<

1) There is indeed a Greek word for "wrist", and it is "karpos" (spelled
exactly like the word meaning "fruit"), according to my Liddle & Scott
abridged edition. It is -not- used in the NT, according to my BAG (1957).
<yup, old stuff...like me!>

2) I dunno...

3) BAG makes no reference to any association with the wrist proper.

4) Not in my ratty old UBS 2nd edition. My electronic NA27 seems to
indicate that there is a variant (Nestle-Aland has always shown more
variants than the UBS) here but it does not give any detail (at least that
I have discovered). 

I might recommend investing in the latest edition of the
Bauer-Arndt-Gingrich lexicon, and a pocket edition of the Nestle-Aland 27th
edition. I do not know what the lexicon cost (I bought mine 20 years ago)
but the NA is available for about $25 US. 

While having an electronic bible with tools comes in handy, I doubt that
many here will put a lot of faith in Strong's numbers, since there is a lot
of variation between editions when it comes to these codes and there is a
problem with errors in the codes embedded in some translations. If your
edition of the OLB has a morphology database, use it rather than that
Strong's number info. 
But above all, get printed editions of lexicons and NT editions whenever
you can. Not -everything- is amenable to digitation! 

Dave Hindley
DHindley at compuserve.com



More information about the B-Greek mailing list