[B-Greek] QEOS as a proper name?
James Ernest
jdemail at charter.net
Tue Jul 27 07:51:44 EDT 2004
Living as we do in a culture where names mean nothing (i.e., Mr. Smith has
never worked at an anvil, and John Anderson's dad was named Fred, not
Anders) we may be predisposed to insist that an ancient nomen (noun or name)
be emptied of significance (i.e., that it become a mere pointer to an
individual entity that in no way describes that individual) before we move
it from our "noun" category to our "name" category.
Of course QEOS, KYRIOS, XRISTOS are all common nouns in ancient Greek. And
yet for those who could say "ALL hHMIN hEIS QEOS hO PATHR ... KAI hEIS
KYRIOS IHSOUS XRISTOS," QEOS, KYRIOS, and XRISTOS become nomina propria, do
they not? Seems to me this would especially be the case with QEOS, since no
other name is used.
Maybe our contemporary linguists work with definitions that make "name" and
"title" distinct categories and mean that QEOS will still be a common noun
or a title and never a "name." Is anything more than current linguistic
nomenclature at stake here? Do ancient grammarians offer anything on this
question?
James Ernest
--------------------------------
James D. Ernest, Ph.D., Editor
Baker Academic
+1 616 891 5625 (office)
jernest at BakerAcademic.com
http://www.BakerAcademic.com
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