EPROFHTEUSEN - Luke 1:67

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Sat Jul 1 06:39:38 EDT 2000


At 4:10 AM -0400 7/1/00, Suedaleg at aol.com wrote:
>I have a question about the form of a verb and its implications if any.  In
>Luke 1:67 Luke use the aorist of PROFETEUW.  I noticed that in the
>Coptic/Egytian manuscripts it is EPROFUTEUSEN, but in the Byzantine
>manuscripts it is PROEFHTEUSE.  I understand the second as the compound is
>PRO-FETEUW.  Is the first simply a geographic dialect difference? or is there
>a subtle distinction in how these two grougs may have seen the word?

The more interesting of these forms is PRO-E-FHTEUSE, which follows
standard Greek practice for compound verbs: the augment falls between the
prefix and the tense-stem of the uncompounded verb. Yet I think the verb
PROFHTEUW is actually a denominative formed from the noun PROFHTHS rather
than from some supposed verb FHTEUW which would have been formed from a
noun such as FHTHS or FHTEUS. That is to say: the form PRO-E-FHTEUSE is an
anomaly: a logically produced form that is wrong; I'd guess this could be a
scribal error but certainly the ordinary form would be EPROFHTEUSE(N).

-- 

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University
Summer: 1647 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu OR cwconrad at ioa.com
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/



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