ἀπιστία (the range of sense of the alpha privative)
Posted: December 8th, 2013, 9:58 am
The alpha privative (ἄλφα στερητικόν) in (for an example to begin this thread) ἀπιστία (unbelief), seems to be handled in a fairly cut and dry way as having the sense "without faith", "unbelief" - something like an on/off switch. I've been wondering about the sense of alpha-privatives these days, wondering whether they really imply the total absence of <such and so>, or just a reduced (noticeably lacking) ammount of it? For the exemplar ἀπιστία, I have been thinking about 2 things:
- (1) In Matthew 17:20 (RP) Ὁ δὲ Ἰησοῦς εἶπεν αὐτοῖς, Διὰ τὴν ἀπιστίαν ὑμῶν. Where ἀπιστία is meant in the sense of ὀλιγοπιστία (littleness of faith) it is rendered as such in a some manuscripts, but not all, suggesting that ἀπιστία may not always be meant to convey so totally negative a meaning.
(2) In the Modern Greek lexica, the alpha-privative does not convey so clear cut an absence of <such and so>. For this exemplar, let me render ἀπιστία from Triandafyllidis into Koine spelling and accents and Imperial Koine restored pronunciation, and just listing the sense that occurs in the NT, ἀπιστία would be something like;- ἀπιστία, ἡ [apistía], ἡ ἔλλειψις πίστεως (the shortfall of faith)
- ἔλλειψις, ἡ [élipsēs] τὸ μὴ ὑπάρχειν (to not exist), καθ' ὁλοκληρίαν ἢ ἐν μέρει (entirely or in part), τί ἀναγκαίον (anything/something neccessary)