Genesis 1.2 epefereto

Maurice A. O'Sullivan mauros at iol.ie
Wed May 3 11:54:53 EDT 2000


At 20:00 02/05/00, Daniel Scott Monroe wrote:
>I am puzzled by epefereto of Genesis 1.2.  Middle Liddell has "to bring,
>lay, put upon," as well as "to attack."  I feel that epiforew and epifora
>must indicate the direction in which to expand epiferw:

Daniel:
You have to start by considering what Hebrew term is here being translated.
In the MT of Gn. 1:2 the verb employed is resh-chet-peh. It is found only 3 
times, twice in the Piel, once in the Qual. The standard lexicon ( BDB ) 
regards the Qual form ( found at Jr. 23:9 ) as meaning " grow soft, relax ".
OTOH, it regards the verb which has the Piel form as a separate verb [ 
noting any connection with the word in Jr as 'dubious' ] , meaning " hover" 
and "move gently".

If you consult
Muraoka, Takamitsu. Hebrew/Aramaic Index to the Septuagint. Keyed to to the 
Hatch-Redpath Concordance. Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1998.
you will find two Greek terms EPIPOQEIN and our EPIFEREIN listed under the 
Piel form of the verb
EPIPOQEIN is what the translator of Dt. 32:11 chose for the hovering of the 
eagle over its young as expressed by the Piel form, whereas the translator 
of Gn. 1:2 chose EPIFEREIN

>  Lampe renders
>epifora as "impact, attack," but allows a gentler "divine visitation,"
>whereas epiforew parallels epiferw in meaning "to put upon," but departs in
>indicating "to make pregnant."


Given that Lampe covers _patrisitic_ greek ( and includes only those words 
from LSJ which have shifted in meaning, together with words _not_ found in 
LSJ at all ) I don't think you will find it of much use for LXX Greek.

BTW, by going to the Perseus site, especially the Morphological Analysis 
feature at:
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/morphindex?display=SMK&lang=Greek&corpus=2.0&author=

you can then link to the citations contained in the big LSJ, and further 
link to the actual texts ( Greek and English )

Enjoy!

Regards
Maurice


Maurice A. O'Sullivan  [ Bray, Ireland ]
mauros at iol.ie






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