Luke 15:13 etc. ἄσωτος υἱός and ???? υἱός

Semantic Range, Lexicography, and other approaches to word meaning - in general, or for particular words.
Stephen Hughes
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Joined: February 26th, 2013, 7:12 am

Re: Luke 15:13 etc. ἄσωτος υἱός and ???? υἱός

Post by Stephen Hughes »

cwconrad wrote:
Stephen Hughes wrote:In narrative composition yes, I agree there is a difference in idiom between Greek in English, more or less following the style we see in Thucydides, but in descriptive texts - involving abstractions - such as the lists of good and bad characteristics that people have, there are plenty of adjectives.
What descriptive texts have you in mind? I haven't looked or thought about Longinus. I mentioned Theophrastus, and it occurs to me that Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics develops lists of virtuous behavior and corresponding excessive and deficient terms, but it's not clear to me what works you're thinking of. I confess that I have not at all looked at Greek patristic discussions of Biblical texts, but that might be a resource. One exception worth mentioning: 1 Cor 13 offers a number of adjectival descriptions of ἀγαπή, although it works much of its descriptive analysis through 3rd-person singular verbs.
I was thinking of Titus actually, but the same is true of the other pastorals I seem to recall.
Titus 1:5-9 wrote:ούτου χάριν κατέλιπόν σε ἐν Κρήτῃ , ἵνα τὰ λείποντα ἐπιδιορθώσῃ, καὶ καταστήσῃς κατὰ πόλιν πρεσβυτέρους , ὡς ἐγώ σοι διεταξάμην·6 εἴ τίς ἐστιν ἀνέγκλητος , μιᾶς γυναικὸς ἀνήρ, τέκνα ἔχων πιστά, μὴ ἐν κατηγορίᾳ ἀσωτίας ἢ ἀνυπότακτα. 7 Δεῖ γὰρ τὸν ἐπίσκοπον ἀνέγκλητον εἶναι , ὡς θεοῦ οἰκονόμον · μὴ αὐθάδη , μὴ ὀργίλον , μὴ πάροινον , μὴ πλήκτην , μὴ αἰσχροκερδῆ, 8 ἀλλὰ φιλόξενον, φιλάγαθον, σώφρονα, δίκαιον, ὅσιον, ἐγκρατῆ, 9 ἀντεχόμενον τοῦ κατὰ τὴν διδαχὴν πιστοῦ λόγου, ἵνα δυνατὸς ᾖ καὶ παρακαλεῖν ἐν τῇ διδασκαλίᾳ τῇ ὑγιαινούσῃ, καὶ τοὺς ἀντιλέγοντας ἐλέγχειν.
To change that description of character from it's present genre to a narrative genre (gospel / hagiographical) would require recomposition with verbal descriptions (the more participles, the more densely packed). In response to Jonathan's desire to discuss texts in Greek, handling the differences in genre would be a good idea towards achieving idiomatic expression. The epistles are places where the other texts of the Bible are discussed, so looking there for style, and to the Gospel passage under consideration for content naturally leads to the need to go beyond the bounds of NT vocabulary, as in this case where the adjectival ἄσωτος needs to be added to the extant abstract nominal ἀσωτία and the adverbal ἀσώτως.

Real people or types, the story in the Gospel serves as "real life" example of what a person holding a church office should not be like. A step further in the depth of description would be to describe the places he went to, as the passage that I put up a few days ago about finding henchmen in the bars and brothels with red words illustrates.
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
Michael W Abernathy
Posts: 20
Joined: June 11th, 2015, 3:43 pm

Re: Luke 15:13 etc. ἄσωτος υἱός and ???? υἱός

Post by Michael W Abernathy »

Donovan's book can be downloaded from https://archive.org/details/theoryofadvanced11donouoft. As far as I can tell google books does not have it in ebook form.
Sincerely,
Michael Abernathy
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