[B-Greek] Ambiguity in Cyril of Alexandria

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Thu May 13 15:24:21 EDT 2004


At 7:24 PM +0100 5/13/04, Dan and Rachel King wrote:
>Apologies if this is off-topic a little. I have come across a sentence which
>seems to have two possible meanings (in fact, its modern editor has taken it
>one way and the ancient Syriac version takes it the other way, but I won't
>way which is which!).
>
>FASI TOINUN KATA TOUS ANWQEN ETI KAIROUS (HTOI CRONOUS) DIHiRHSQAI TOUS TE
>APO TOU KAIN GEGONOTAS FHMI KAI TOUS APO TOU hENWS
>
>Either
>"They say then that in still earlier times (or periods) there was a
>distinction between the descendents of Cain (I would say) and the
>descendents of Enosh"
>
>Or
>"They say then that the descendents of Cain were distinguished by still
>longer times (or periods) [sc. their longevity]; and I say that the
>descendents of Enosh were also [distinguished in this way]."
>
>Can anyone give any thoughts on which makes better sense? Perhaps one of
>them should actually be ruled out. They both seem possible to me, but I may
>have missed something. The difference would appear to lie in whether one
>takes FHMI as an interjection with no syntactical effect or as a second main
>verb. In the latter case, I would have rather seen a DE instead of a KAI, so
>maybe I plump for the first option. Any advice would be most welcome...

I think that the second version should definitely be ruled out--for two
reasons: (1) TE ... KAI would seem to indicate that descendants of Cain and
descendants of Enos are viewed as closely linked; (2) I don't see how
DIHiRHSQAI can have the sort of meaning that would refer to a single entity
as is implied in the second version: I think that DIHiRHSQAI must have both
the descendants of Cain and the descendants of Enos as subjects. The
addition of FHMI may be to clarify just which ones were distinguished from
each other; I'd convert it thus in a fashion to retain the force of the
word-order: "They claim that they were distinguished (from each other) in
even earlier periods (or epochs), i.e. (FHMI) the descendants of Cain and
the descendants of Enos."
-- 

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/



More information about the B-Greek mailing list