Re: "ANDRES" IN ACTS SPEECHES

From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Tue Dec 19 1995 - 07:00:26 EST


At 12:57 AM 12/18/95, Mark Penner wrote:
>What is the translational significance of ANDRES in Luke 1:16 and 2:14

You did say ACTS speeches in the subject header, and it became clear once I
looked up the GOSPEL of Luke 1:16 and 2:14 that you couldn't be referring
to those verses, but this is confusing! (unintentionally, of course)

>when Peter begins an address? I always thought that since greek has
>ANQROPOS, ANDROS and GUNH were strictly gender related. 1:16 wasn't a
>problem, since ANRES ADELFOI can just be translated "brothers," since
>the brothers are all men. I'm provisionally translating 2:14 "men of
>Judea and Jerusalem," but wonder if perhaps this is some kind of formula
>for beginning a speech that has nothing to do particularly with gender.
>Can anyone help me out with this one?

While there's room for argument over this, I'd say at the outset that there
are numerous expressions in Greek going back to much earlier usage in which
an adjective, an agent noun, or particularly an ethnic or citizenship name
is combined with ANHR much as English once more commonly combined it in
such whole words as "countryman," "husbandman," "fisherman," or phrases
like "handy man."

Athenian speeches in the courtroom as well as in the assembly are
repeatedly broken by vocative phrases, W ANDRES AQNHAIOI, and I would think
that what we have in both these instances is precisely that traditional
usage in the vocative. So far as ANDRES ADELFOI is concerned, I don't think
it is necessarily true that the "brothers" are all men; rather, I think
ADELFOS has become a community term for members of the community. This is,
I believe, one of those terms which is translated "brothers and sisters" in
the NRSV precisely because it is thought to be a generic term traditionally
used in the masculine form but actually referring to a mixed-gender group.

I would cautiously say, then, but certainly not dogmatically, that
masculine gender is NOT to be assumed from the use of ANHR rather than
ANQRWPOS in these passages. Our late-20th-century usage of "guys" as a
colloquial word used particularly in address for a mixed-gender group.

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University
One Brookings Drive, St. Louis, MO, USA 63130
(314) 935-4018
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu OR cwc@oui.com
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/



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