[B-Greek] (ELLHNOS
Carl Conrad
cwconrad2 at mac.com
Tue May 26 05:48:14 EDT 2009
On May 26, 2009, at 12:45 AM, Kenneth Litwak wrote:
>
> I read a commentary this weekend on Acts that claims that (ELLHNOS
> could be understood as "Hellenized Israelite." I find that
> problematic but I have a question. Is there an unambiguous Greek
> word that would have meant "Gentile" with no possibility of
> confusion that Luke could have used to indicate someone was a non-
> Israelite? Thanks.
EQNIKOS appears 3x in Matthew in the sense of "Gentile" (5:47, 6:7,
18:17) and it appears 1x in 3 John 7.
EQNOS is very common in the sense of "Gentile" -- especially in the
Pauline letters
Louw & Nida: you might want to look at the whole doman §11.12-54,
(Socio-religious) groups and classes of persons and members of such
groups
L&N 11.40 Ἕλλην [hELLHN] b, ηνος [HNOS] m: (an extended
meaning of Ἕλληνa ‘Greek,’ 11.90) a person who is a Gentile
in view of being a Greek — ‘Gentile, non-Jew, Greek.’ μὴ
εἰς τὴν διασπορὰν τῶν Ἑλλήνων
μέλλει πορεύεσθαι καὶ διδάσκειν
τοὺς Ἕλληνας [MH EIS THN DIASPORAN TWN hELLHNWN MELLEI
POREUESQAI KAI DIDASK;EIN TOUS hELLHNAS]; ‘he is not likely, is he,
to go to the Jews scattered among the Greeks and to teach the
Greeks?’ Jn 7:35. Though the occurrence of Ἕλλην [hELLHN] in Jn
7:35 could be interpreted as merely a reference to Greeks, it is
probably a reference to Greeks as being Gentiles, and therefore
Ἕλλην [hELLHN] b is classified here in the subdomain of socio-
religious groups. The occurrence of Ἕλλην [hELLHN]in Ac 14:1
(ὥστε πιστεῦσαι Ἰουδαίων τε καὶ
Ελλήνων πολὺ πλῆθος [hWSTE PISTEUSAI IOUDAIWN TE
KAI hELLHNWN POLU PLHQOS] ‘so that a large number of Jews and
Gentiles believed’) is another instance of Ἕλλην [hELLHN]
referring primarily to a socio-religious group rather than merely to
Greeks as a nation.
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
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