[B-Greek] Question about the semitic vocative

Rolf Furuli furuli at online.no
Tue Dec 19 13:05:31 EST 2006


Dear James,

Akkadian does not have an article, and one way of making a noun definite is 
to add a pronominal suffix, as in Hebrew and Aramaic. To Octavio I will 
refer to the UBS "Hebrew New Testament," which renders the phrase )A:DONI 
WELOHAY (my lord and my god). It is quite clear that the Hebrew article does 
not play any role in this phrase (John 20:28) - it is unnecessary. However, 
we should also note that the Greek article does not necessarily have any 
semantic function in the phrase. C. F. D. Moule (1959:116-117) "An Idiom 
Book of New Testament Greek" 2nd ed. says that the article is necessary when 
"a substantive in the Nominative case is used in a vocative sense and 
followed by a possessive". Thus, what primarily makes QEOS definite is the 
possessive and not the article.


Best regards,

Rolf Furuli Ph.D
University of Oslo

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "James Spinti" <JSpinti at Eisenbrauns.com>
To: <B-Greek at lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Tuesday, December 19, 2006 5:33 PM
Subject: Re: [B-Greek] Question about the semitic vocative


True. But what I said about definiteness and suffixes applies equally to 
Aramaic and Hebrew; my Akkadian is too rusty to be sure of, but there is a 
"bound form" which has the nominal suffix. I don't recall a definite article 
in Akkadian, does anyone remember?

HTH,
James
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James Spinti
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