[B-Greek] Analytic versus Natural Reading; the case of ANOIGW

Mark Lightman lightmanmark at yahoo.com
Sun Apr 26 19:26:55 EDT 2009


My title makes it sounds like this is going to be a long, boring,
scholarly post.  Don't worry; I'll make sure it's not scholarly. 
 
You have your analytic Greek readers.  They have to know not
only what every word means, but what its form is, and why it has that 
form.  Then you have your natural readers, who are content
with understanding the essence of a passage, and don't care
much for parsing or morphology or grammar.
 
I am an extreme analytic reader.  I have to understand
every letter and breathing mark of every word. If there
USED to be a digamma there, I want to know about it
One of the reasons I have been enjoying Homer so much
is, he has all sorts of forms, some of which are MORE
regular than koine, and some of which are so bizarre
that there is a special word for them--heteroclitic.
A heteroclitic word is a word that is so weird that
even an analytic reader has nothing to say about
it. But natural readers just read heteroclitic
words without even knowing that they are heteroclitic.
 
Now, for some reason I am an analytic reader with every
Greek word except for ANOIGW.  I can tell you, I HAVE
to tell you, the root and the stem and parsing info for
every word in the Greek NT.  But I didn't know, and I 
don't know, the root of ANOIGW.  I don't know if the AN
is a preposition or part of the root. I don't know, and I
don't care, what the principle parts of ANOIGW are.
I don't know if it is a MI verb or not, or if it's transitive.
When I read the word, I don't think about whether it
is aorist or middle or has one or two or no augments.
I just READ the word.  I know what it means and I 
move on and start analyzing every other Greek word.
 
Why am I a natural reader with just this word?  I think 
it's because while ANOIGW is quite complicated in
form, in meaning it never causes me any trouble.  It is
a common word, both in the NT and elsewhere, but
it seems like it always has an easy subject or object
nearby.  Only a few things "open," doors, eyes, books,
and it is always easy to figure it out.  I've never looked
up ANOIGW in a lexicon because I've never had to.
I don't know, and I don't care, if a given form is active
or passive or transitive or instransitive because I 
don't think it ever matters in meanings.  Doors can
open or be opened and the aspect doesn't seem to matter.
I think one sees STOMA or QURA nearby and one just
jumps over the form of ANOIGW and gets to its meaning.
In a word, natural reading.  Now, you can't do this with most
Greek words.  If you don't know whether ESTHN is a 
first or second aorist you are going to get in trouble 
with meaning.  This is why I know so much about
the morphology of hISTHMI, and say PEIQW (which
I always have to analyze; does it mean  "trust"
in the perfect and "obey" in the passive or is it the
other way around?) because I have to. 
 
What I wonder about is, is this just me?  Is ANOIGW
an objectively easy word to naturally read or am I 
just a savante about this and an idiot about everything 
else?  Can a natural reader just as easily naturally read
iSTHMI and PEIQW?
 
Mark L. 


      


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