[B-Greek] PROSCWMEN and ORQOI

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Fri Jun 15 05:56:08 EDT 2007


On Jun 14, 2007, at 10:04 PM, Eric Weiss wrote:

> Two words from John Chrysostom's Divine Liturgy:
>
> PROSCWMEN - Let us be attentive
> ORQOI - (Let us?) Arise
>
> Does PROSCWMEN come from PROSECW?

Unquestionably; one might expect two sigmas: PROS-SCWMEN -- it's  
aorist subj. 1 sg. in the hortatory sense; this verb was originally  
used with the acc. object NOUN or plur. NOUS: "direct (one's) mind,"  
and very early came to be used without the object in the sense "pay  
attention (to)."

> ORQOI seems to come from ORQOW.

I think this is more likely the nom. pl. of ORQOS/H/ON used with an  
implicit hortatory subjunctive like ANASTWMEN (ANISTAMAI/ANESTHN).
Compare Acts 14:10 EIPEN MEGALHi FWNHi: ANASTHQI EPI TOUS PODAS SOU  
ORQOS!

Or you might compare the liturgical Latin phrase SURSUM CORDA, lit.  
"hearts upward" but usually in English it's "Lift up your hearts."

> Are these subjunctives, imperatives, optatives, or what?
>
> What is the morphological explanation of these endings, and where  
> are they on
> charts or in, e.g., Smyth?

These are not Classical but ecclesiastical Greek expressions; the  
only thing, however, that strikes me as odd is the simplification of  
the double sigma into a single sigma; that's probably a matter of  
spelling reflecting pronunciation.


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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