Spelling in GNT editions (split from "Basics of Verbal Aspect in Biblical Greek")

Grammar questions which are not related to any specific text.
RandallButh
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Spelling in GNT editions (split from "Basics of Verbal Aspect in Biblical Greek")

Post by RandallButh »

MAubrey wrote: November 7th, 2017, 12:34 am
RandallButh wrote: November 6th, 2017, 11:42 pm Any comment on why γράφειν 'grafen, λύειν 'lyen would be with /e/ instead of /i/? The shift of /ei/ to /i/ is often considered to be among the earliest shifts of the Great Greek Vowel Shift.
It's been so long, that I genuinely can't remember...
If you haven't read it recently, I would recommend a quick read/review (10-30 min) through
" Ἡ Κοινὴ Προφορά Koiné Pronunciation: Notes on the Pronunciation System of Koiné Greek"
https://www.biblicallanguagecenter.com/ ... unciation/
(The PDF is recommended because of preserving formatting in the tables.)

The equivalency ει / ι as /i/ will come up in the presentation by Tyndale House at ETS this year (Nov 2017) on their new edition of Mark. It appears that the early texts of the GNT used ει as ι a lot, and this has implications for manuscript evaluation and tracing genealogy. Pete Williams claims that B (Vaticanus) consistently preserves etymological length with long ει versus short ι.
This appears to be a scholastic redaction since earlier papyri (e.g. p46) do not show such care.
MAubrey
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Re: Opinions about the book "Basics of Verbal Aspect in Biblical Greek"

Post by MAubrey »

RandallButh wrote: November 7th, 2017, 1:18 pm
MAubrey wrote: November 7th, 2017, 12:34 am
RandallButh wrote: November 6th, 2017, 11:42 pm Any comment on why γράφειν 'grafen, λύειν 'lyen would be with /e/ instead of /i/? The shift of /ei/ to /i/ is often considered to be among the earliest shifts of the Great Greek Vowel Shift.
It's been so long, that I genuinely can't remember...
If you haven't read it recently, I would recommend a quick read/review (10-30 min) through
" Ἡ Κοινὴ Προφορά Koiné Pronunciation: Notes on the Pronunciation System of Koiné Greek"
https://www.biblicallanguagecenter.com/ ... unciation/
(The PDF is recommended because of preserving formatting in the tables.)

The equivalency ει / ι as /i/ will come up in the presentation by Tyndale House at ETS this year (Nov 2017) on their new edition of Mark. It appears that the early texts of the GNT used ει as ι a lot, and this has implications for manuscript evaluation and tracing genealogy. Pete Williams claims that B (Vaticanus) consistently preserves etymological length with long ει versus short ι.
This appears to be a scholastic redaction since earlier papyri (e.g. p46) do not show such care.
When I say I can't remember, I mean I can't remember why I made the orthographic choice. I know the phonology. I have Gignac within arms length of where I'm typing.
Mike Aubrey, Linguist
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Koine-Greek.com
Stephen Carlson
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Re: Opinions about the book "Basics of Verbal Aspect in Biblical Greek"

Post by Stephen Carlson »

RandallButh wrote: November 7th, 2017, 1:18 pm Pete Williams claims that B (Vaticanus) consistently preserves etymological length with long ει versus short ι.
Wasn't the contrastiveness of vowel length lost by the time of Vaticanus (early 4th cen.)?
Stephen C. Carlson, Ph.D.
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RandallButh
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Re: Opinions about the book "Basics of Verbal Aspect in Biblical Greek"

Post by RandallButh »

Yes, phonemic length was lost in speech already by the first century BCE. However, we also know that scholastic circles preserved the knowledge and as late as the fifth century CE we have Nonnus writing Homeric verse based on length.

From the singularities in Vaticanus, it appears that the ει marking of length is an artificial redaction by the scribe/school that produced the manuscript. Exactly how this was achieved is not known.
Stephen Carlson
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Re: Opinions about the book "Basics of Verbal Aspect in Biblical Greek"

Post by Stephen Carlson »

RandallButh wrote: November 10th, 2017, 11:58 am Tyndale Mark is more consistent and wider in following mss spellings than WH.
I dont know when the spelling normalization took place. For a while it was referred to as having "experts" in first century spelling edit the spelling. That was a sick joke, a euphemism for changing the spelling to fit Erasmian pronunciation. The field is slowly waking up.
I suspect it’s just the application of Classical Greek editorial conventions to the NT. All the editors of the day had extensive training in the classics.
Stephen C. Carlson, Ph.D.
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RandallButh
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Re: Opinions about the book "Basics of Verbal Aspect in Biblical Greek"

Post by RandallButh »

Stephen Carlson wrote: November 10th, 2017, 6:19 pm
RandallButh wrote: November 10th, 2017, 11:58 am Tyndale Mark is more consistent and wider in following mss spellings than WH.
I dont know when the spelling normalization took place. For a while it was referred to as having "experts" in first century spelling edit the spelling. That was a sick joke, a euphemism for changing the spelling to fit Erasmian pronunciation. The field is slowly waking up.
I suspect it’s just the application of Classical Greek editorial conventions to the NT. All the editors of the day had extensive training in the classics.
Yes, that Classical application was the same thing that I was talking about. But they called them(selves) "specialists in first century spelling," that was what was hard to swallow.
Stephen Carlson
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Re: Opinions about the book "Basics of Verbal Aspect in Biblical Greek"

Post by Stephen Carlson »

RandallButh wrote: November 10th, 2017, 6:59 pm Yes, that Classical application was the same thing that I was talking about. But they called them(selves) "specialists in first century spelling," that was what was hard to swallow.
Hort had an interest in manuscript spellings, but Westcott couldn't be more bored by it and at best seemed to humor him. We get our orthography and punctuation of the GNT from the Germans via Nestle. I'm convinced that we ought to revisit our editorial conventions in toto and de novo. Some of the difficulty will be in updating our resources; e.g., the lexica we use do not have headwords with Koine spelling.
Stephen C. Carlson, Ph.D.
Melbourne, Australia
Alan Bunning
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Re: Opinions about the book "Basics of Verbal Aspect in Biblical Greek"

Post by Alan Bunning »

Stephen Carlson wrote: November 10th, 2017, 7:07 pm
RandallButh wrote: November 10th, 2017, 6:59 pm Yes, that Classical application was the same thing that I was talking about. But they called them(selves) "specialists in first century spelling," that was what was hard to swallow.
Hort had an interest in manuscript spellings, but Westcott couldn't be more bored by it and at best seemed to humor him. We get our orthography and punctuation of the GNT from the Germans via Nestle. I'm convinced that we ought to revisit our editorial conventions in toto and de novo. Some of the difficulty will be in updating our resources; e.g., the lexica we use do not have headwords with Koine spelling.
Tucked away among all the other projects I am working on, I have created lexical entries for my lexicon using Koine spelling. For my lexical entries, I wanted to reflect the best Koine spelling of words used in the New Testament. It is not such a straight-forward task though. Since the same word can be spelled so many different ways (including the classical spelling) what would be the best way to go about determining the most representative Koine spelling of a headword? Obviously, there are different statistical approaches that could be applied that yield different answers, but often the results are not satisfying (I know because I have tried several difference schemes). Consider for example, ἀγαθουργέω is the unanimous spelling used of early manuscripts at Acts 14:17, but ἀγαθοεργέω is the unanimous spelling used of early manuscripts at 1Tim. 6:18. And those are the only two occurrences of the word in the New Testament. Should I flip a coin? There are many other difficult examples. Consequently, I show all spellings with each lexical entry (including the classical spelling to make it easy to find in other lexicons), and there will be “see entries” to link them together. But still the definition is only going to appear once in my lexicon and it will be placed in alphabetical order based on a single headword, so some type of decision has to be made.
Jonathan Robie
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Re: Spelling in GNT editions (split from "Basics of Verbal Aspect in Biblical Greek")

Post by Jonathan Robie »

Any chance you could just publish the dataset so anyone could use it in any lexicon? I'd find it very useful to have data that would show three things for each word: (1) surface spelling as found in the manuscript, (2) presumed lexical form, (3) BDAG equivalent.

That would be useful in many projects.
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RandallButh
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Re: Spelling in GNT editions (split from "Basics of Verbal Aspect in Biblical Greek")

Post by RandallButh »

Are the definitions in Greek?
If so, plus keep me in the loop.

On spelling, you may want to check the Tyndale House GNT, as a cross-reference.
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