[B-Greek] Begotten
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Sat Feb 5 06:18:30 EST 2005
At 10:52 PM -0500 2/4/05, WmHBoyd at aol.com wrote:
>I have heard it said that "-genes" could not mean begotten, but it seems to
>mean begotten in 2 Timothy 1:15 - "Hermogenes" ie: begotten of Mercury. I
>have
>often wondered if there are other words with "-genes" in them that would help
>me understand the scope of this partical.
This is different in that it's a proper name of the sort called
"theophoric" and the element -GEN- is associated with the proper noun that
is the name of a god. This root GEN/GON/GN that appears in the verbs
GI(G)NOMAI, GENNAW, in such nouns as GONEUS (parent), GENEA (kindred),
GENOS (kind, kin), GENESIS (birth, generation), and the adjectival root
GENES-, all are associated with birth, generation and relationship through
birth or generation; English "kin" and "kindred" and German Kind (child)
are unquestionable cognates of the IE root seen in those Greek words. With
respect to the adjective MONOGENHS, I don't think it's so much that the
word CANNOT bear the sense "only-child" but that the actual usage attested
in the literature is "only-one-of-its-kind."
--
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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