[B-Greek] Hosea 1:10

Albert Pietersma albert.pietersma at sympatico.ca
Sat Dec 11 11:28:10 EST 2004


On Dec 11, 2004, at 9:54 AM, Carl W. Conrad wrote:

> At 9:24 AM -0500 12/11/04, Timrake at aol.com wrote:
>> In a message dated 12/11/04 12:52:09 AM, lenesen at yahoo.com writes:
>>
>>
>>> For EN TWi TOPWi hOU, Brenton has "in the place
>>> where."  But I wonder if the meaning is perhaps less
>>> physical something like "instead of."
>>>
>> I thought that's pretty much what the idiom means.
>
> English "in place of ..." and "in-stead of" do in fact mean the same as
> French "au lieu de" and German "anstelle von" ..., ; why should EN 
> TOPWi
> hOU (where hOU = hOPOU) be so different? In this instance the idioms 
> are
> fairly common, at least among European languages.
That TOPOS can be used metaphorically, is not in question. That the 
phrase EN TW TOPW in Hos 1:10 functions as a prepositional, as the 
English, French, German phrases clearly do, is quite another matter, it 
seems to me.  That the passage as a whole might favour such a use, 
similarly does make EN TW TOPW into a prepositional. That the Greek  
verse is scarcely a model of semantic transparency is obvious as well 
from the way in which G renders YE)MER LAHEM. To say the least, using 
KLHQHSONTAI instead of the earlier ERREQH should have resulted in the 
dropping of LAHEM, since AUTOIS couldn't possibly work. Yet G insists 
on representing LAHEM and opts for KAI AUTOI, which represents the 
Hebrew quantitatively but distorts its meaning. Note further that, 
whereas in the Hebrew the two occurrences of YE)MER are 
aspectually/temporally identical, G makes them into past and future 
respectively.
Thus in my reading, TW TOPW structurally is the antecedent of OU, and 
semantically refers to a physical location. What that location might be 
  is  certainly not obvious, though it might CONCEIVABLY be the temple 
or the land——assuming that G thought seriously beyond the clause level.
Al

> -- 
>
> Carl W. Conrad
> Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
> 1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
> cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
> WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/
> ---
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>
—
Albert Pietersma
Professor of Septuagint and Hellenistic Greek
Near & Middle Eastern Civilizations
University of Toronto
Home: 21 Cross Street,
Weston ON Canada M9N 2B8
Email: albert.pietersma at sympatico.ca
Homepage: http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~pietersm




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