Question about the lengthened vs unlengthened augment for same parsings

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PhillipLebsack
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Joined: January 17th, 2018, 10:31 am

Question about the lengthened vs unlengthened augment for same parsings

Post by PhillipLebsack »

I noticed in Matt. 22:46 you have ἐδύνατο, while in John 9:33 you have ἠδύνατο. Both are Imperfect middle ind. 3rd singular, as far as I can tell... I suppose the anomalous one is the form in John. What is the reason for it being lengthened?

Also, I noticed in the Gottingen version of the first few chapters of Genesis, the word ευλογεω also seems to sometimes have the lengthened eta in the aorist form but sometimes not, with the same parsing. Is there anything more that can be said besides the common explanation that "spelling wasn't standardized back then"?
Jason Hare
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Re: Question about the lengthened vs unlengthened augment for same parsings

Post by Jason Hare »

There are actually eleven instances of ἐδύνατο (Matthew 22:46; 26:9; Mark 5:3; 6:5; Luke 1:22; John 11:37; Acts 26:32; Revelation 5:3; 7:9; 14:3; 15:8) and four instances of ἠδύνατο (Mark 6:19; 14:5; Luke 19:3; John 9:33) in the NA28.

You should just think of it as a variant, much like εἶπον (the “correct” form found all over the NT) and εἶπα (Mark 9:18; John 10:34, this latter being a quote from the Septuagint and εἶπα being the most common form for λέγω in the aorist active indicative 1cs in the Septuagint) are both used broadly to mean “I said.”

Sometimes in language, speakers just like how one form feels over another. We shouldn’t try to always derive meaning from different forms.
Jason A. Hare
The Hebrew Café
Tel Aviv, Israel
Jean Putmans
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Re: Question about the lengthened vs unlengthened augment for same parsings

Post by Jean Putmans »

A bit late, but here ( is a collection of all NT-Transcriptions of the INTF with εδυνατο/ηδυνατο. As you can see, in all NT-Verses there aremss with ε- and mss with η.
Jean Putmans
Netherlands
Jean Putmans
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Joined: August 3rd, 2018, 1:01 am
Location: Heerlen; Netherlands

Re: Question about the lengthened vs unlengthened augment for same parsings

Post by Jean Putmans »

I sorted the data according to the mss (NB: The Uncials are marked UNZ at the end of the file!)

Jean Putmans
Netherlands
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