ARSENOKOITHS/ARRENOKOITHS

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Tue Mar 7 02:47:00 EST 2000


At 11:37 PM -0500 3/6/00, Jason Hare wrote:
>Steven Miller,
>
>> << Whoever lies with a male in bed (ARSENOS KOITHN) as with a woman, both
>> of them have committed an abomination >> (Lev 20:13a LXX).
>>
>> The Greek term ARSENOKOITAI would then appear to be a clear allusion to
>> ARSENOS KOITHN and thus the context would make it clear that it refers to a
>> male homosexual.
>
>Good call!  «KAI hOS AN KOIMHQHi META _ARSENOS_KOITHN_ GUNAIKOS...»
>
>This could also explain the second declension eta ending (it originated as
>a feminine word).  Interesting.

I just want to be sure (pedantically!) there's not a misunderstanding here,
as it appears from your linkage (META _ARSENOS_KOITHN_ GUNAIKOS) there may
well be. In Lev 20:13 LXX ARSENOS is governed by the preposition META,
while the genitive GUNAIKOS depends upon KOITHN; KOITHN GUNAIKOS is an
adverbial accusative characterizing the predicate of the relative clause,
KOIMHQHi META ARSENOS. One should NOT read ARSENOS KOITHN here as a single
word or even as the origin of a single word. Rather ARSENOKOITHS is an
agent noun--1st declension masculine--of the same type as POIHTHS, NAUTHS,
DESPOTHS, etc. It is compounded of the two root-elements, of course,
ARSENO- and KEI/KOI- (from KEIMAI, of which KOIMAOMAI is an extended form).
So it is not really a "second declension eta ending"--and in fact, I'm not
sure what a "second declension eta ending" refers to; so far as I know, ALL
nouns of the second declension--masculine, feminine, and neuter without
exception--are O-stems.

>So there is no other mention of ARRENOKOITHS in secular Greek?  Why, then,
>does it have this alternative spelling (with RR instead of RS)?
>
>Just curious.

IMHO this is the sort of curiosity that pays very great rewards;
personally, I've come to see through more mysteries of Greek lexicography
and morphology from careful study of regular patterns of phonological
change of consonants and vowels in conjunction than from any other kind of
absorption of the "lore" of Greek grammar. For that very reason I've always
tried to stress the importance of principles of phonetic change in Greek
even in the first year of teaching/learning Greek.

Smyth (at Perseus web site):
79. Later Attic has rr for rs of older Attic: tharros courage = tharsos,
arrên male = arsên.
a. But rs does not become rr in the dative plural (rhêtor-si orators) and
in words containing the suffix -sis for -tis (ar-sis raising).

-- 

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics/Washington University
One Brookings Drive/St. Louis, MO, USA 63130/(314) 935-4018
Home: 7222 Colgate Ave./St. Louis, MO 63130/(314) 726-5649
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/b-greek/attachments/20000307/f4f30e16/attachment.html 


More information about the B-Greek mailing list