[B-Greek] 1 John 2:4

Carl Conrad cwconrad2 at mac.com
Sun Feb 3 17:15:04 EST 2008


On Feb 3, 2008, at 3:08 PM, JMonte2000 at aol.com wrote:

> Hi all
>    I'm weak on writing in Greek electronic font and  haven't  
> attempted to
> master writing in English capital letters yet, and don't  want to  
> make mistakes
> at this time. So, please bare with me.
> My question is in 1 John 2:4, the 4th word in the Greek text is "to  
> Know" a
> perfect active indicative 1st person. Why in the Greek text does it  
> have a
> capital epsilon? I see it reduplicates (in a perfect) the gamma by  
> using an
> epsilon, but why capitalize it, and is this a standard thing, or  
> abnormal? Are
> there rules for this if it is normal.
> Thanks for all the post replies to my question about what books are  
> harder
> to read in Greek. I appreciate it very much. You all are kind.

1John 2:4 ὁ λέγων ὅτι ἔγνωκα αὐτόν καὶ  
τὰς ἐντολὰς αὐτοῦ μὴ τηρῶν ...
hO LEGWN hOTI EGNWKA AUTON KAI TAS ENTOLAS AUTOU MH THRWN ...

The word you indicate is EGNWKA, pf. indic. 1 sg. active of GINWSKW.  
It's not upper-case in my Greek text. The only reason why some editors  
might write it in upper case is that EGWKA AUTON is clearly a  
citation, the content of what the speaker indicated by hO LEGWN is  
saying: "The one who says, 'I know' and doesn't observe my  
commandments ..." This is a matter of editor's choice; it is not a  
standard usage to indicate a direct quotation that way, but some  
editors prefer to do it; it's tantamount to the convention of modern  
spelling to enclose direct quotations within quotation marks.


Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)






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