[B-Greek] Accents
cwconrad2
cwconrad2 at mac.com
Fri Dec 10 08:24:57 EST 2010
On Dec 09, 2010, at 12:53 PM, Iver Larsen <iver_larsen at sil.org> wrote:
> A.T. Robertson says in his chapter 5.5 about accents:
>
> Ἑρμᾶς (Ro. 16:14) is from the old Doric form abbreviated from Ἑρ-
> μόδωρος; Ἑρμῆς (Ro. 16:14) may be merely the name of the god
> given to a man, though Blass doubts it. Likewise we may note
> that θευδᾶς (Ac. 5:36) is possibly an abbreviation of θεόδωρος;
> Ἰουνίας (sometimes taken as feminine Ἰουνία, Ro. 16:7) may be
> Ἰουνιᾶς as abbreviation of Ἰουνιανός.
>
> I don't want to go into the question whether Ἰουνίαν IOUNIAN in Rom 16:7 refers
> to a man or a woman. My question is only a matter of accentuation.
> Is it correct that the circumflex accent indicates that the word is assumed to
> be an abbreviation or contraction? Does it indicate anything about the gender of
> the person?
> Is is correct that Ἰουνίαν in the accusative could be either masculine or
> feminine, and that the acute accent does not decide one way or the other?
> There are many Greek transcriptions of Hebrew masculine names that end in -ίας.
> Al Wolters in JBL 127.2 mentions 15 in the NT: Ἀνανίας, Βαραχίας, Ἑζεκίας,
> Ζαχαρίας, Ἠλίας, Ἠσαΐας,
> Ἰερεμίας, Ἰεχονίας, Ἰωσίας, Λυσανίας, Λυσίας, Μαθθίας, Ματταθίας, Ὀζίας, and
> Οὐρίας.
According to Smyth §171.b. "b. A contracted penult has the circumflex when the
ultima is short ... " -- that would be the case IF we knew that the original form of the
name were ᾿Ιουνιάνος; §171.c "b. A contracted ultima has the acute when the
uncontracted form was oxytone ... " -- which would be the case if the original form
of the name were ῾Ιουνιανός. But the Latin name Juniānus is accented on the
penult; Latin never accents the ultima. So I think that ᾿Ιουνιᾶς could indeed be a
shortened form of ᾿Ιουνιάνος, but I don't think that the Latin name "Junianus"
would ever be accented on the ultima, as ᾿Ιουνιανός. None of the proper names
in the GNT cited above is Latin in origin.
But all this seems highly speculative.
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (ret)
More information about the B-Greek
mailing list