Axioms of NT Greek Grammar

Dave Washburn dwashbur at nyx.net
Sun Jun 24 20:21:02 EDT 2001


> > Harry,
> > > When I spoke of the," Axioms of NT Greek Grammar" I simply ment the
> > > established rules of NT Greek grammar that's not based on inductive
> > > reasoning. We of course get these rules from modern Greek as well as
> > > sources closer to our time than NT Greek. I guess you could call these
> > > rules, the "Mechanics" of the language.
> > 
> > I don't know of any grammars that actually apply rules of modern 
> > Greek to NT Greek, but perhaps you've seen some works that I 
> > haven't since I've spent the last several years focusing more on 
> > Hebrew than on Greek.  Nevertheless, modern Greek can only tell 
> > us so much, ditto for Byzantine Greek; induction is pretty much 
> > the only approach we have available for figuring out the mechanics 
> > of a dead language, whether Koine Greek, Palestinian Aramaic, 
> > Ugaritic or any other such language.  I don't think it's correct to 
> > write off something simply because it's arrived at by an inductive 
> > approach, because I haven't seen any demonstration that an 
> > inductive approach is incorrect.
> > 
> > Dave Washburn
> <snip>
> 
> Hi Dave!
> 
> No Dave, I never said that inductive reasoning and statistical analysis 
> didn't have a place in NT Greek or in other fields of interest. I only
> indicated that there was no certainty to results of these methods.
> Nows here's the problem Dave. I sit down with someone who doesn't 
> believe in God. I then point to Titus 2:13 and say to him Sharps
> rule(actually a theory) proves this to teach that Jesus is God. 

I'm not sure where this came from, I certainly didn't bring it up 
because I do my best to avoid theology per the rules of the list.  
For me the question isn't a theological one, it's purely a 
grammatical one.  

Well
> now, he would be well within reason to reject that assertion. But
> if I sat down with someone and said the Greek adjective agrees with
> the noun it modifies, why that would be different. I believe Colwell's
> rule(theory) as well a Sharp's rule have too small of a statistical
> data base anyway for any high probability that they may be true. Also
> you might want to take a look at those List articles on breaking 
> Sharp's rule.

I've looked at them, Harry.  I found them unconvincing.  By the 
approach you suggest, there's little if anything that we can know 
about Koine Greek because we have too small of a statistical 
base.  I can't buy that.  YMMV.  That's pretty much everything I 
have to say on this topic since it's clear we're getting nowhere.  I'm 
will to agree to disagree.

Dave Washburn
http://www.nyx.net/~dwashbur
"You just keep thinking, Butch.  That's what you're good at."




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