[B-Greek] Vocative of QEOS (was:Hebrews 1:8)
George F. Somsel
gfsomsel at juno.com
Wed Jun 30 10:23:31 EDT 2004
On Wed, 30 Jun 2004 06:35:11 -0700 (PDT) Cirk Bejnar
<eluchil404 at yahoo.com> writes:
> --- "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.
>
> Cirk R. Bejnar
>
___________
I see that Carl has already informed you that QEOS does indeed have a
vocative case. I thought, however, that I might amplify on the use of
the vocative in the NT and koine in general. Carl has often said, and it
is true, that koine was a period of flux in Greek. You yourself had
questions whether there was a specifically vocative form for QEOS. Due
to the fact that the vocative is always the same as the nominative in the
plural combined with the fact that there are numerous words (e.g., proper
names of cities) where they are indeclinable leads to a situation where
there aren't that many forms that could clearly be identified as being
distinctively vocative. Consider your own experience. Perhaps you were
raised on the A.V. as I was and fully understand its language. There
are, however, many who really do not have this intimate connection to the
language of the Jacobean period. Consequently, I frequently hear persons
who want to say something that sounds vaguely Biblical mangle the syntax
by using a Jacobean form improperly. Even so, certain forms tended to
fall away by disuse. Sometimes the only way that you can tell a vocative
is by usage since it isor more properly a nominative being used as a
vocative.
george
gfsomsel
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