[B-Greek] 1 Cor 7:2

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Mon Aug 14 12:08:06 EDT 2006


I am going to send Joel's message on to the list this way and offer  
an answer to it at the same time.

Forwarded for: "Joel Jordan" <joeljordanuk at hotmail.com>
Date: August 14, 2006 11:30:38 AM EDT
To: <b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org>
Subject: [B-Greek] 1cor 7:2


 >Hello!
 >I'm new to Ancient Greek and b-Greek, but have been looking at  
1cor7:2, and wondering why there is an asymmetry in the text.   
Perhaps it is just that I am still a novice with Greek?
 >The two parts in question are:
 >
 >THN hEAUTOU GUNAIKA
 >vs.
 >TON IDION ANDRA
 >
 >My expectation was that the word IDION would have been/was going to  
be AUTH.
 >My wild guess was that possibly this was because a woman may have  
belonged to her man (hence use of genitive), but a man was identified  
with a woman - rather than belonged to her.  As I say, >this is just  
a guess, and is probably just due to my current level of awareness of  
Greek workings of grammar.

I think this is really essentially a matter of variation, like "six  
of one and half a dozen of the other." The text in question could  
just as easily and without alteration of meaning have been THN IDIAN  
GUNAIKA and TON hEAUTHS ANDRA.

 >If such novice's questions are too elementary for b-greek, then  
please say and I shall refrain from posting until I am more advanced.

Questions that are really about the Greek language or about the Greek  
text of the Bible are welcome, however elementary. The list-members  
of B-Greek (1400+, most of them "lurkers" who receive the messages  
but never participate in the discussion) come from all points on the  
geographical and cultural landscape, some more advanced, others  
barely started on the course toward understanding Biblical Greek and  
the Greek Bible. Topics raised and discussed in this forum really do  
range from fairly simple matters of grammar to complex and  
practically insoluble questions of textual analysis. You should read  
the list's FAQ at http://www.ibiblio.org/bgreek/faq.txt and observe  
the list's guidelines: focus on the Greek language of the Bible or  
the Greek text of the Bible and steer clear of theological and  
hermeneutical issues -- and observe standards of respectful discourse  
so that everyone can profit from list-discussion.

 >
 >2nd question: is it okay to use unicode on b-greek as I have done?   
(I find the transliteration hard to read and write.)

In point of fact, your text did NOT come through in Unicode Greek:  
you need to use plain-text UTF-8 and the rule that we have laid down  
is that, IF list-members wish to cite a Greek text in Unicode, then  
they must ALSO display the transliterated text. If that's really a  
difficulty, one way is to make use of the web-site http:// 
zhubert.com/  There you can fill in a couple blanks to get the Greek  
text you want to cite and then in the pop-up menu below select  
"bgreek" and click on "Add" For Genesis 1:1 that will yield: EN ARCHi  
EPOIHSEN hO QEOS TON OURANON KAI THN GHN. I simply copied and pasted  
that from http://zhubert.com/ -- I didn't type it out myself.

If you practice the transliteration scheme a bit, it's not really  
that difficult -- certainly no more difficult than learning the Greek  
alphabet itself.

 >many thanks,
 > Joel Jordan

(yes, you must use a full-name signature)



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





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