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Dorotheus of Gaza
Posted: August 18th, 2021, 10:07 am
by mikeatnip
To stretch my Biblical Greek I try reading texts other than the NT. Here is the opening paragraph of Dorotheus of Gaza's Asceticas.
Ἐν ἀρχῇ ὅτε ἐποίησεν ὁ Θεὸς τὸν ἄνθρωπον, ἔθετο αὐτὸν ἐν τῷ παραδείσῳ, καθὼς λέγει ἡ ἁγία Γραφή, κοσμήσας ἁπάσῃ ἀρετῇ, δοὺς αὐτῷ ἐντολὴν τοῦ μὴ φαγεῖν ἐκ τοῦ ξύλου τοῦ ἐν μέσῳ τοῦ παραδείσου.
I can get everything except κοσμήσας. I expect this to be aorist 3rd singular, but it appears to be second singular. What am I missing?
Thanks
Re: Dorotheus of Gaza
Posted: August 18th, 2021, 1:20 pm
by Barry Hofstetter
mikeatnip wrote: ↑August 18th, 2021, 10:07 am
To stretch my Biblical Greek I try reading texts other than the NT. Here is the opening paragraph of Dorotheus of Gaza's
Asceticas.
Ἐν ἀρχῇ ὅτε ἐποίησεν ὁ Θεὸς τὸν ἄνθρωπον, ἔθετο αὐτὸν ἐν τῷ παραδείσῳ, καθὼς λέγει ἡ ἁγία Γραφή, κοσμήσας ἁπάσῃ ἀρετῇ, δοὺς αὐτῷ ἐντολὴν τοῦ μὴ φαγεῖν ἐκ τοῦ ξύλου τοῦ ἐν μέσῳ τοῦ παραδείσου.
I can get everything except κοσμήσας. I expect this to be aorist 3rd singular, but it appears to be second singular. What am I missing?
Thanks
Neither. It's an aorist participle (parallel to δούς) in the nominative singular, "having adorned him with all virtue..."
Re: Dorotheus of Gaza
Posted: August 18th, 2021, 1:44 pm
by mikeatnip
Thanks, Barry. Makes sense now why there is no augment. I chose a Greek text for which I have no English translation so that I have to figure things out without using "the interlinear crutch." Hobbling along, I decided to use the B-Greek crutch.

Re: Dorotheus of Gaza
Posted: August 18th, 2021, 3:48 pm
by Jonathan Robie
Alpheios is really helpful for this kind of thing - you can quickly get inflections and definitions for text on any web page. Including this one.

- Screen Shot 2021-08-18 at 15.42.50.png (149.26 KiB) Viewed 5046 times
The initial gloss may not fit, but you can get to LSJ with one click:

- Screen Shot 2021-08-18 at 15.46.56.png (323.58 KiB) Viewed 5046 times
Re: Dorotheus of Gaza
Posted: August 18th, 2021, 6:52 pm
by mikeatnip
Thanks, Jonathan. I cannot reply to your PM it seems (because I am a new user, I assume), but yes, that is me. Had no idea anyone connected to PN would be on this board.
And the Alpheius site seems to be a good resource, of which I was not aware.
Re: Dorotheus of Gaza
Posted: August 18th, 2021, 11:46 pm
by Barry Hofstetter
Jonathan Robie wrote: ↑August 18th, 2021, 3:48 pm
Alpheios is really helpful for this kind of thing - you can quickly get inflections and definitions for text on any web page. Including this one.
Screen Shot 2021-08-18 at 15.42.50.png
The initial gloss may not fit, but you can get to LSJ with one click:
Screen Shot 2021-08-18 at 15.46.56.png
Or you can simply memorize principal parts and paradigms until you can do it instinctively.
Re: Dorotheus of Gaza
Posted: August 19th, 2021, 9:27 am
by mikeatnip
Like remembering that the nu and tau drop out of the aorist nominative participle. I used to know that; too much info trying to squeeze into my grey matter, and that detail got pushed out. Nice to have this little episode to insert it back in there. Hope it stays.

Re: Dorotheus of Gaza
Posted: August 19th, 2021, 3:45 pm
by Jonathan Robie
Barry Hofstetter wrote: ↑August 18th, 2021, 11:46 pm
Or you can simply memorize principal parts and paradigms until you can do it instinctively.
But if you forget, or if you find it easier to learn by immersing yourself in real Greek and reading rather than memorizing tables, Alpheios can help. One click from the first dialog I showed, you can see this useful table:

- Screen Shot 2021-08-19 at 15.43.38.png (103.27 KiB) Viewed 4983 times
And it also has Smyth, so you can go from that table to a grammar and read up on principal parts and paradigms in a useful grammar.
Re: Dorotheus of Gaza
Posted: August 20th, 2021, 7:21 am
by Philip Arend
Excellent tool. Just downloaded and tried it out. Thanks.