[B-Greek] Luke 5:29 LEUI*S*?
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Tue Jul 3 08:03:10 EDT 2007
On Jul 3, 2007, at 7:37 AM, Jonathan Robie wrote:
> This has to be a simple one ;->
>
> Luke 5:29
>
> (Unicode) Καὶ ἐποίησεν δοχὴν μεγάλην
> Λευὶς αὐτῷ
> (B-Greek Transliteration) KAI EPOIHSEN DOCHN MEGALHN LEUIS AUTWi
>
> Why is it LEUIS, and not LEUI?
You would prefer maybe "Lewis"?
> Levi is the subject here, there's no
> reason to decline his name in any way, so what's that S doing at
> the end?
Nom. sg. ending. This is pretty much the same thing that happens with
IHSOU: nominative and accusative endings are added to proper names
ending with a vowel or diphthong.
Mark too has the accusative LEUIN (2:14). But Heb (7:5, 9) uses LEUI
as nominative. My great-grandfather who came to the U.S. shortly
before the Civil War felt that he had to change his name from "Carl"
to "Charles" in order to "Americanize" it by using the FRENCH form.
Where it was easy enough to do, Greek writers tended to put Aramaic
names into Greek declensional patterns.
Carl W. Conrad
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