DOXA renders kabod
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Wed Apr 24 12:18:44 EDT 2002
At 8:56 AM -0700 4/24/02, c stirling bartholomew wrote:
>on 4/24/02 8:17 AM, Jonathan Burke wrote:
>
>> (over here the word is spelt 'capital' - a capitol is a feature of a
>> Greek city).
>
>Thanks Jonathan.
>
>For some of us (not all) E-mail is electronic speech. Capital and capitol
>have exactly the same phonetic value in the Puget Sound area. Occom, Occum,
>Occam all sound exactly the same here. Which is why we don't waste each
>others time on b-greek correcting spelling. Right?
Right. We never do. Of course there's the possibility that we could declare
that final vowel in any word accented on the penult or antepult with an
ultima ending in single consonant to be a shewa, or even spell it Occ'm or
capit'l.
>Did anyone ever answer your LSJ question?
I assume that is the final question in this message below:
At 11:27 PM -0400 4/23/02, jburke at sprint.com.au wrote:
>"Essential nature" as a gloss for MORPH seems to be up against some serious
>difficulties, since most of the elements in MORPH's semantic domain have to
>do with physical appearance. The big problem with the NT use of the term is
>Phil 2:6ff. What does hOS EN MORFHi QEOU hUPARCWN mean?
>>
>
>Well, it seems to me that the examples given by LSJ are perfectly in
>order. I don't see any reason to get all hot and bothered about the
>passage in Philippians. Why not just translate it as 'form'? That's well
>within the semantic range of MORFH. I don't see what the fuss is about.
>
>>
>I assume this issue is lurking unmentioned in your question. Perhaps not.
>>
>
>Perhaps, but until I've had further correspondence, I won't know what this
>guy is getting at. We're actually having a discussion about the
>legitimacy of lexicons, and what to do when lexical definitios conflict.
>As an example, he gave me the definition which is apparently in his
>favourite lexicon (but without any supporting evidence), knowing that I
>use LSJ and that it is different. I gave him LSJ 9 with the supporting
>quotes, and he insists that the definition is the same, and that the two
>Greek passages I cited refer explicitly to 'essential nature'. It didn't
>look that way to me.
>
>>
>On the use and abuse of LSJ 9, I will leave that to someone else.
Does this guy also think that Jesus in his incarnation took on "the
essential nature" of a slave? Or that the specific "essential nature" of a
human being is identical with that of a slave?
Regarding the worth of lexica, I think I've said my say on this before, but
I'll repeat: I don't believe that ANY reference work can be trusted to be
right in EVERY assertion or definition. LSJ can be wrong, L&N can be wrong,
BDAG can be wrong. Smyth and Robertson can be wrong. Wallace can be wrong.
I think some of these are more trustworthy than others, but it's surely a
mistake to accept at face-value ANY and EVERY assertion of any particular
reference work. We can't attribute divine or even semi-divine authority to
any work produced by human beings and all reference works are produced by
human beings. Nevertheless, over the course of time one comes to have a
sense of which works are more consistently useful and helpful. As a general
rule (and one so obvious that I'm almost ashamed of putting it in writing),
I believe that a reference work is the more useful and valuable to the
extent that it cites as fully as possible the evidence upon which its
assertion is based; that allows the user to judge whether s/he thinks the
assertion is more or less likely to be valid.
--
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
Most months:: 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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