[B-Greek] Vocative of QEOS (was:Hebrews 1:8)

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Wed Jun 30 09:54:46 EDT 2004


At 6:35 AM -0700 6/30/04, Cirk Bejnar wrote:
>--- "George F. Somsel" <gfsomsel at juno.com> wrote:
>> QEOS is in the nominative.  ...
>> nominative is used for the vocative.
>> george
>> gfsomsel
>
>Not to be pedantic, but does QEOS have any
>specifically vocative form?  My understanding was that
>QEOS, like Latin 'deus', was never given a vocative
>form, so that calling this nominative for vocative
>seems a bit odd.

This same concern arose in my mind when I first noted this usage; In the NT
generally hO QEOS is used as equivalent to a vocative (12x: Matt. 27:46;
Luke 18:11; Luke 18:13; John 20:28; Heb. 1:8; Heb. 10:7; Rev. 4:11; Rev.
11:17; Rev. 15:3; Rev. 16:7); the one exception is Mt 27:46 ... ANEBOHSEN
hO IHSOUS FWNHi MEGALHi LEGWN: HLI HLI LEMA SABACQANI? TOUT' ESTIN: QEE MOU
QEE MOU, hINATI ME EGKATELIPES? But note that Mk 15:34 has rather ELWI ELWI
LEMA SABACQANI hO ESTIN MEQERMENHEUOMENON: hO QEOS MOU hO QEOS MOU, EIS TI
EGKATELIPES ME? The Rahlfs LXX text of Ps 22:1 has the form as in Mk: hO
QEOS MOU.

On the other hand, the LXX has 8 instances of QEE as the vocative of QEOS:
2Sam. 7:25; 3Mac. 6:2; 4Mac. 6:27; Ode. 14:12; Wis. 9:1; Sir. 23:4; Hos.
14:4; Ezek. 4:14.
-- 

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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