Stephen
While I thank you for the links to the relevant Greek passages, I must express my surprise at the rest of your response to my post requesting answers to a few simple questions. I don't know what set you off but I was immediately reminded of Proverbs 18:13 (ὃς ἀποκρίνεται λόγον πρὶν ἀκοῦσαι, ἀφροσύνη αὐτῷ ἐστι καὶ ὄνειδος).
In response to my request for the ancient Greek words for "step-brother" and "step-sister" (in a different but related thread) you informed me that ἀδελφὸς οὐχ ὁμοπάτριος and ἀδελφὸς οὐχ ὁμομήτριος are used for a step-brother. For a "step-sister" it would be the same, of course,
mutatis mutandis. Now since this is like catching your nose the other way round, simpler expressions would be ἀδελφὸς ὁμοπάτριος (=and ἀδελφὸς οὐχ ὁμομήτριος) and ἀδελφὸς ὁμομήτριος (=ἀδελφὸς οὐχ ὁμοπάτριος), which I in fact saw in certain ancient Greek texts on the Internet.
Now there are these two single words for step-siblings, ὁμομήτωρ and ὁμοπάτηρ, which you didn't mention.
The entry for ὁμομήτωρ in the "Online Liddell-Scott-Jones Greek-English Lexicon" at the website stephanus.tlg.uci.edu/lsj/ provides links to Orph.Fr.15, Poll.3.23. Due to some error the link to the first, when clicked, opens not to the referenced passage but to "Orphica Lithica," in which ὁμομήτωρ does not appear. That is why I didn't see the word. When you click the second reference, the highlighted portion of the text that appears again does not contain ὁμομήτωρ but it does appear about ten words down as homomêtores. That is why I missed it.
With regard to ὁμοπάτηρ, the lexicon makes a reference to "GDI4972 (Crete)," but since there is no link given and I couldn't figure out what it was anyway, I checked the two linked references for ὁμοπάτωρ shown in the same entry in the lexicon: Pl.Lg.924e, Is.11.1. The first opens to a passage from Book VI of Plato's Laws, but what appears in the highlighted text there is ἀδελφῶν ὁμοπατρίων ("brothers who have the same father"), where ὁμοπατρίων is a form of ὁμοπάτριος (adjective), not ὁμοπάτωρ. The second linked reference (Is.11.1) opens to a page containing text in which ὁμοπάτωρ does not appear at all.
My interest in these two words (ὁμομήτωρ and ὁμοπάτηρ) was just to see them actually used in some Greek text as single words. My chief interest is the use of ἀδελφὸς and a
delphê alone in ancient Greek to refer to step-siblings, as I indicated in the other thread. I think I have found what I was looking for in Antiphon's (the orator) Φαρμακείας κατὰ τῆς μητρυιᾶς ("Against the Stepmother for Poisoning"), where the words ἀδελφοῖς ὁμοπατρίοις καὶ μητρὶ ἀδελφῶν ("my half-brothers and their mother") occur in 1.1. Thereafter throughout the rest of the speech a particular step-brother who is engaged in litigation with the speaker is referred to as simply ἀδελφός in sections 5, 14 and 21. It would appear from this that in ancient Greek once a person is identified as someone's step-brother or step-sister, ἀδελφός alone would suffice for any further references to him, that is, it was not necessary to attach the adjective ὁμοπάτριος or ὁμομήτριος everytime he or she was referred to.
I wrote in the other post
In an article on the subject of whether Jesus had blood siblings or not, a writer who holds that ἀδελφός in the New Testatament may be used in a wider sense than the classical Greek sense of "blood brother" argues that if the writers of the New Testament had wanted to be precise they could have used Greek words such as homopatôr ("half-brother by the father") or homomêtôr ("half-brother by the mother"), but they didn't. For example, James could have been called homomêtôr of Jesus instead of ἀδελφός [in Galatians 1:19].
That writer thinks that the Hebrew and Aramaic word
ah (rough transliteration) may underlie the use of ἀδελφός in the NT in passages referring to "brothers" of Jesus, which means they are not necessarily blood brothers. In Hebrew and Aramaic
ah is not restricted to blood brothers.
I hold that the
adelphoi and
adelphai of Jesus in the New Testament refer to his step-siblings and that it can be argued on the basis of texts such as Antiphon's Φαρμακείας κατὰ τῆς μητρυιᾶς that the use of these two words in that sense conforms to ancient Greek usage. It is true that Jesus' step-siblings are not identified as such with ὁμομήτριος in the NT writings but their precise relationship could be inferred from the nativity stories by the first readers of Matthew and Luke. As for Mark, John and certain epistles of the NT, where the virgin birth is not mentioned, one may assume that the precise circumstances of Jesus' birth were such common knowledge among the readers of these writings in the first century that the use of ὁμομήτριος even once would have been superfluous. There are also the following linguistic arguments:
1. Jesus said, παραδοθήσεσθε δὲ καὶ ὑπὸ γονέων καὶ ἀδελφῶν καὶ συγγενῶν καὶ φίλων (Luke 21:16), where ἀδελφῶν καὶ συγγενῶν are distinguished.
2. When describing Mark as Barnabas' "cousin," the apostle Paul uses
anepsios in Colossians 4:10, but he refers to James as "the Lord's [Jesus'] brother [
adelphos]" in Galatians 1:19. In 1 Corinthians 9:5, Paul refers to "the brothers of the Lord" (
adelphoi), i.e., James, Joses (=Joseph), Judas and Simon.
In both cases, ἀδελφός is clearly used in the narrower classical Greek sense of "blood brother."
However, there are passages in the NT where the Hebrew and Aramaic ah does seem to underlie ἀδελφός. For example, in Acts 13:26 Paul addresses fellow Jews as "brothers" as being children of the same fathers Abraham and Israel. Similarly, fellow Christians are "brothers" as they share the same spiritual Father.
In conclusion, I would say that both the classical Greek and the Hebrew/Aramaic usages underlie the use of ἀδελφός in the NT and which is which in a given case has to determined by an examination of the relevant context.
Any comments?
Leonard Jayawardena