[B-Greek] Lightman discusses his two favorite topics

Carl Conrad cwconrad2 at mac.com
Sun May 23 07:50:24 EDT 2010


> Any thoughts on this topic will be appreciated.

Any? I hope so. But I am not sanguine about it.

ΦΩΣΦΩΣ ΜΑΡΚΟΣ [FWSFWS MARKOS]? Dost thou jest?

An antiquarian fishing expedition? Miscegenation of monikers?
Saturday amusement, echoing back to December 7, 1996, when 
we followed the lead of list-owner Jonathan Robie to piece together
a Koine (sort-of) version of Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky."

As for the matter at hand, it must be admitted that FWSFWS has
a decidedly "marked" character. Neither Mike Aubrey nor Steve
Runge would extract from the archives of dead linguists relevant
scholarly ammunition to claim that FWSFWS is "unmarked."

But what is the "mark" that we discern in FWSFWS?
Is it a "mark" of MARKOS GELWTOPOIOS GALAPAGWSSEUS?
(a tortoise from an island west of Ecuador, up in years and the
funniest-looking thing you ever saw)

Or is it a "mark" of MARKOS GRAMMATIKOGRAFEUS GLWSSOLALOGOS?
(a researcher of arcane grammatical lore who speaks in unknown tongues)

Or is it a "mark" of MARKOS TELEREUNHTHS TECNICOTLHMWN?
(a long-suffering-crafty far-fetcher)

FWSFWS is clever but it has a "ring" or a "clang" or a "fishy" sound to it.
That's it: I suspect that it is formed by vocalic DIEKTASIS (a stretching
out of the quality of the vowel to incredible lengths) of an original medial Iota
to a penultimate Omega.

FWSFWS [ΦΩΣΦΩΣ] really must originally have been FISFIS [ΦΙΣΦΙΣ]

Τhis derives ultimately from a fragment of a lost comedy of Aristophanes
entitled hOI GASTERALGOUNTES [῾ΟΙ ΓΑΣΤΕΡΑΛΓΟΥΝΤΕΣ] ("The Bellyachers"),
a once-celebrated line from the chorus for whom the play is titled:

πλοπποπφισφις ωουαταρελιφιτιζ [PLOPPLOPFISFIS WOUATARELIFITIS]

To be sure, there's the well-known line from the chorus of the Frogs that's better
known -- and perhaps better appreciated:

βρεκεκέξ κοάξ κοάξ [BREKEKEX KOAX KOAX}

But after we have for so long "pondered over many a volume of forgotten lore,"
it is worth ferreting out the truth of the matter that the name FWSFWS really
derives -- by process of vocalic diectasis --from an original Aristophanatic choral
line, and the ultimate source of the word was really FISFIS (pronounced 
"fizz-fizz") [ΦΙΣΦΙΣ].

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)

On May 22, 2010, at 12:09 PM, Mark Lightman wrote:
> My two favorite topics are
> 
> 1.  Ancient Greek
> 
> 2.  Mark Lightman
> 
> If you translate my surname into Greek, one way 
> to do it is Φωσφορος  (FWSFOROS)
> which means something like a 
> "bringer of light."  I'm not sure what a "lightman" is, but
> this is 
> probably the sense of the word, someone who goes around and lights the 
> lamps
> in the Shtetl, or maybe someone who was in charge of the 
> lighting in the Yiddish theater.
> ("To be or not to be, oy, what a 
> question!")
> 
> There is this other guy over on B-Latin named Marcus 
> Lucifer, but that is another story.
> 
> Anyway, to get back to the 
> "topic," since learning Homer, I now realize that there may be
> a 
> better way of rendering "Lightman" into Ancient Greek, namely Φωσφως 
> (FWSFWS.)
> You see, there are actually two words, φως with a circumflex and φως with an acute.
> The first is probably from FAINW and means "the thing that shines, light" 
> while the
> second is probably from FUW and means "the thing which is 
> born," i.e. "a man."
> Φως is in fact very common in Homer for "man"   
> Homer also uses φως for light,
> except that he always uses the 
> uncontracted form φαος  (FAOS.)  The contracted
> form for "light," φως 
> with the circumflex, occurs 73 times in the Greek NT, but φως with the 
> acute, 
> "man," never occurs in Early Christian literature; you won't find it, for example, in BDAG.
> 
> But is it possible that John is punning on 
> these two words in John 1:6ff?
> εγενετο ανθρωπος... 8 ουκ ην εκεινος 
> το φως, αλλ  ινα μαρτυρησῃ περι του φωτος.
> (EGENETO ANQRWPOS...OUK 
> HN EKEINOS TO FWS ALL' hINA MARTURHSHi
> PERI TOU FWTOS.)  "There was a man...This guy was not the Light, but he came
> in order to testify about the Light.
> 
> Get it?  John was a man (φως) who testified about Jesus, who was a light 
> (φως)
> AND a man (φως.)  Jesus is a light/man?  Yes.  That is the 
> essence of the Christian
> gospel, that the very Light of the World became one of us so 
> that we might be saved
> from eternal darkness.  Ιησους φωσφως εστιν.  
> (IHSOUS FWSFWS ESTIN.
> 
> The problem with my theory, besides its 
> obvious narcissism, is that we don't know enough
> about the writer and original readers of John to know whether they would have gotten
> the 
> pun.  Was the word φως (man) still understood among whoever wrote and 
> read
> this Gospel?  Did these folks read any Homer?  How the heck 
> would I know?
> How the heck would anyone know?  This, in essence, is 
> the problem, not with
> a little Greek, but with a lot of Greek.  The 
> more Greek you know, the more likely
> you are to read things into the text which may or 
> may not be there.
> 
> But, getting back to the topic, what do you 
> guys think of Φωσφως Μαρκος?( FWSFWS MARKOS)
> Does this 
> anachronistically mix dialectical epochs, and even if it does, should
> I still use it.  Or should I choose?  Φαοσφως would be good Homeric Greek and
> Φωσανθρωπος would be good Koine, but neither sounds any good.
> 
> Any thoughts 
> on this topic will be appreciated.  










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