[B-Greek] Greek Term in Bar-Kokhba Habakkuk

Kent Clarke kentdclarke at hotmail.com
Thu Feb 15 01:22:52 EST 2007


Hello All:

I'm trying to define a term located in the Greek Minor Prophets Scroll
(50 BCE-50 CE) found in one of the Bar-Kokhba caves. The text is Habakkuk
2:3 (the critical text is located in DJD VIII).

The term is "enphanhsetai (the exact spelling is epsilon, nu, phi, alpha,
nu, eta, sigma, epsilon, tau, alpha, iota), which I parse as a third person
singular, future passive indicative form. I have looked in all of my
lexicons and databases, but have not been able to find it in any inflected
form.
Thinking that the epsilon-nu prefixed to phi is uncommon in Greek, I also
tried to look for "emphanhsetai" with a mu instead of the nu. I did readily
find "emphaneia" and "emphanhs", meaning "to manifest, reveal, make visible
etc". The non-prefixed form "phaino" (phi, alpha, iota, nu, omega) fits well
with this.

I have also checked the Septuagint versions of Sweet and Ralphfs, where they
both have "anatelei" instead of the above term. This Greek Habakkuk text
seems to be following more closely the Hebrew MT with the meaning "to
testify."

I have several questions:

1) Would all agree with my parsing of the verb?
2) Does anyone know if this term (in any inflected form) occurs within other
extant Greek literature?
3) Is my assumption that the nu has been changed into a mu fair (I believe I
have seen this change take place in other Greek texts, but can't recall "the
rule" that allows for such a change)? Can we simply call it an orthographic
change?
4) Is my assumption possible that the Habakkuk term corresponds to the idea
of being "manifest", and so could be translated something like "it shall be
manifest"?

Thank you in advance for any help or insight!

Warm Regards;

Kent


Kent D. Clarke (Ph.D. Bristol)
Associate Professor of Religious Studies
Department of Religious Studies
Seal-Kap House
Trinity Western University
7600 Glover Road
Langley, BC
V2Y 1Y1
Canada

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