[B-Greek] Three Greek Expressions

Carl Conrad cwconrad2 at mac.com
Mon Jun 20 07:33:58 EDT 2005


On Jun 19, 2005, at 8:49 PM, Jeffrey B. Gibson wrote:

> I'm forwarding this message from, Mile Grondin, the owner of the  
> Gospel
> of Thomas List.  He is not a B-Greek subscriber.  I'll post any  
> replies
> to him that you may have.
>
> Jeffrey Gibson
>
> ****
>
> Here's a question (hopefully not too naive) for the Greek experts on
> the list. As you may or may not know, the Coptic Gospel of Thomas,
> like other Coptic texts, employs a number of Greek loan-words. As it
> turns out - and contrary to expectation - the number of occurrences
> of such words in the ms may be significant. However, I can't quite
> pin this down, because there's three expressions used in CGTh that I
> don't know whether to count as single words or double-word
> expressions. Separated as two words, the expressions in question are
> as follows:
>
> 1. DIA TOUTO (therefore)
> 2. EI MHTI (unless)
> 3. OUX hOTI (because)
>
> Whether the English translations given are correct is of interest,
> but not of primary importance. What is of primary importance is
> whether any of these expressions might have been considered a single
> word by an Egyptian Coptic-Greek speaker.

I'm not familiar with DIA TOUTO as a single word in Greek, although  
DIO (for DI' hO) is common in Attic and appears in NT Koine; OUC hOTI  
appears, but not in the sense "because" and I'm not sure it appears  
as a single word. Other such combinations that DO appear as single  
words are: hINATI ("why?") and hOUNEKA for hOU hENEKA ("for which  
reason ..."). Nothing like answering a different question than the  
one asked, is there?



Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad at ioa.com or cwconrad2 at mac.com
WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/




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