A greek defintion of ERCOMAI

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Wed Jul 10 15:27:38 EDT 2002


At 2:38 PM -0400 7/10/02, Mike Sangrey wrote:
>I just thought of something fun.
>
>How would you define ERCOMAI by using Koine Greek?  No English allowed.
>I'm thinking of something like an entry in a 1st century dictionary of
>Koine.
>
>The term `koine' is a poor choice, but I'm thinking primarily about
>limiting the vocabulary to that cited in NT lexicons.
>
>Synonyms and antonyms are allowed, even encouraged, though I suppose we
>would have to borrow terms for `synonym' and `antonym' from
>extra-Biblical vocabulary.

What the point of the question is I cannot fathom. ERCOMAI is used 634x in
the GNT, with the following distribution (from Accordance):

                Total    Hits per
                 Hits   1000 words

        Matthew  114       5.37
           Mark   85       6.50
           Luke  101       4.50
           John  157       8.62
           Acts   52       2.49
         Romans   10       1.21
   1Corinthians   18       2.22
   2Corinthians   16       3.08
      Galatians    8       3.01
      Ephesians    2       0.72
    Philippians    3       1.57
     Colossians    2       1.09
 1Thessalonians    4       2.33
 2Thessalonians    2       2.12
       1Timothy    4       2.15
       2Timothy    4       2.77
          Titus    1       1.29
       Philemon    0       0.00
        Hebrews    5       0.88
          James-
         1Peter    0       0.00
         2Peter    1       0.80
          1John    4       1.60
          2John    2       7.19
          3John    2       7.87
           Jude    1       1.87
     Revelation   36       3.24

The verb most commonly used as its equivalent is hUPAGW, the source of the
MG verb "go" which is PAW.

hUPAGW is used 79x in the GNT; it's noteworthy, in my opinion, that the
most frequent usage is in Mark & John, whose vocabulary has always seemed
to me the most "common" in the GNT. Distribution for hUPAGW:

                Total    Hits per
                 Hits   1000 words

        Matthew   19       0.89
           Mark   15       1.15
           Luke    5       0.22
           John   32       1.76
           Acts-
        Hebrews    0       0.00
          James    1       0.48
         1Peter-
         2Peter    0       0.00
          1John    1       0.40
          2John-
           Jude    0       0.00
     Revelation    6       0.54

This probably has no bearing whatsoever on Mike's all-too-well-hidden agenda.
-- 

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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