1 Tim 5:9 Scope of μή

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Stephen Carlson
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1 Tim 5:9 Scope of μή

Post by Stephen Carlson »

1 Tim 5:9 wrote:Χήρα καταλεγέσθω μὴ ἔλαττον ἐτῶν ἑξήκοντα γεγονυῖα, ἑνὸς ἀνδρὸς γυνή, ἐν ἔργοις καλοῖς μαρτυρουμένη,
What is the scope of μή? The whole participial phrase, as if: "not having become less than sixty years old"? Or just the complement, as if: "having become not less than sixty years old"?
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Stephen Hughes
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Re: 1 Tim 5:9 Scope of μή

Post by Stephen Hughes »

Stephen Carlson wrote:"not having become less than sixty years old"
Does this mean like, "She was 70 when she was originally enrolled for the widows' support. That was 10 years ago, this year she's 61, so next year will be her last year. When she becomes 59 she will be young enough to look after herself."

After a long dark night ὀψίας δὲ γενομένης.
Last edited by Stephen Hughes on April 28th, 2014, 8:51 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Stephen Carlson
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Re: 1 Tim 5:9 Scope of μή

Post by Stephen Carlson »

You confuse me, Stephen.
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Re: 1 Tim 5:9 Scope of μή

Post by Stephen Hughes »

Stephen Carlson wrote:You confuse me, Stephen.
Forgive my low IQ, but your English sentence, "not (yet) having become less than sixty years old." seems to suggest that ages can decrease.

As suggested by my parenthesised "yet", it seems that you are reading the meaning of μήπω too easily into the μή, when you read the μή with the γεγονυῖα. Is that justifiable?

I take γεγονυῖα to mean "if she has become".

I'm surprised by the accusative following the ἔλαττον rather than a genitive. I think that suggests that μὴ ἔλαττον is additional to the originally intended syntax.

What would you take these two variations to mean had they been written instead?
  • Χήρα καταλεγέσθω ἐτῶν ἑξήκοντα γεγονυῖα or
  • Χήρα καταλεγέσθω μὴ ἑλάττων ἐτῶν ἑξήκοντα γεγονυῖα
To me the first means that she only has a one year window of opportunity for enrollment.

The second justifies taking μὴ with γεγονυῖα, but suggests that ages go down. I don't know the language or your thinking well enough to say, but my suspicion, when I wrote that thing that confused you is that to get the sense you want in "not having become less than sixty years old", it needs to be adjectival rather than adverbial, but that's part of the Greek idiom that I'm unfamiliar with.

I can't answer the question why μὴ ἔλαττον ἐτῶν ἑξήκοντα is used rather than ἐτῶν ἑξήκοντα ή μείζον. If that second option (which wouldn't have this ambiguity) was available, and wasn't taken, then it might suggest that μὴ was intended to be taken with γεγονυῖα, but not necessarily.
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Jonathan Robie
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Re: 1 Tim 5:9 Scope of μή

Post by Jonathan Robie »

Stephen Carlson wrote:
1 Tim 5:9 wrote:Χήρα καταλεγέσθω μὴ ἔλαττον ἐτῶν ἑξήκοντα γεγονυῖα, ἑνὸς ἀνδρὸς γυνή, ἐν ἔργοις καλοῖς μαρτυρουμένη,
What is the scope of μή? The whole participial phrase, as if: "not having become less than sixty years old"? Or just the complement, as if: "having become not less than sixty years old"?
I read this as:

(μὴ (ἔλαττον ἐτῶν ἑξήκοντα))
(not (having become less than 60 years old))

This is also the reading of the Global Bible Initiative treebank (formerly known a ABSo) and of Dag Haug's PROEIL treebank.

GBI construes γεγονυῖα with ἑνὸς ἀνδρὸς γυνή:

(γεγονυῖα (ἑνὸς ἀνδρὸς γυνή))

PROEIL construes it with μὴ ἔλαττον ἐτῶν ἑξήκοντα:

(γεγονυῖα (μὴ (ἔλαττον ἐτῶν ἑξήκοντα)))

The punctuation for SBLGNT and 1904 Nestle both side with PROEIL here:

μὴ ἔλαττον ἐτῶν ἑξήκοντα γεγονυῖα, ἑνὸς ἀνδρὸς γυνή
ἐξίσταντο δὲ πάντες καὶ διηποροῦντο, ἄλλος πρὸς ἄλλον λέγοντες, τί θέλει τοῦτο εἶναι;
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Stephen Carlson
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Re: 1 Tim 5:9 Scope of μή

Post by Stephen Carlson »

Stephen Hughes wrote:Forgive my low IQ, but your English sentence, "not (yet) having become less than sixty years old." seems to suggest that ages can decrease
Well, they can't. The gloss is to give you the intended scope of the negation, not a semantic analysis of every constituent. Maybe there is some wrong with one of the wooden glosses.
Stephen Hughes wrote:As suggested by my parenthesised "yet", it seems that you are reading the meaning of μήπω too easily into the μή, when you read the μή with the γεγονυῖα. Is that justifiable?
No, I don't think the difficulty is here. And the adverbs seem equivalent.
Stephen Hughes wrote:I take γεγονυῖα to mean "if she has become".
Why not "if she is"?
Stephen Hughes wrote:I'm surprised by the accusative following the ἔλαττον rather than a genitive. I think that suggests that μὴ ἔλαττον is additional to the originally intended syntax.
Huh? ἐτῶν is genitive plural and ἑξήκοντα is indeclinable. There is no accusative in sight.
Stephen Hughes wrote:I can't answer the question why μὴ ἔλαττον ἐτῶν ἑξήκοντα is used rather than ἐτῶν ἑξήκοντα ή μείζον. If that second option (which wouldn't have this ambiguity) was available, and wasn't taken, then it might suggest that μὴ was intended to be taken with γεγονυῖα, but not necessarily.
That's not my question. Perhaps "not less than" is more idiomatic in such kinds of rule making. One would need to do a proper study of legalistic terminology, and that won't answer the original question.
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Re: 1 Tim 5:9 Scope of μή

Post by Stephen Carlson »

Jonathan Robie wrote:I read this as:

(μὴ (ἔλαττον ἐτῶν ἑξήκοντα))
(not (having become less than 60 years old))
What happened to γεγονυῖα? Does this mean option 2, that μή scopes with the complement of the participle but not the participle itself? Why do you read it that way?
Jonathan Robie wrote:This is also the reading of the Global Bible Initiative treebank (formerly known a ABSo) and of Dag Haug's PROEIL treebank.
How can these be accessed?
Jonathan Robie wrote:GBI construes γεγονυῖα with ἑνὸς ἀνδρὸς γυνή:

(γεγονυῖα (ἑνὸς ἀνδρὸς γυνή))
Presumably the widow is no longer the wife of one man, so how would the perfect make sense on this parsing?
Jonathan Robie wrote:PROEIL construes it with μὴ ἔλαττον ἐτῶν ἑξήκοντα:

(γεγονυῖα (μὴ (ἔλαττον ἐτῶν ἑξήκοντα)))
Option 2, then ("having become not less than sixty years").
Jonathan Robie wrote:The punctuation for SBLGNT and 1904 Nestle both side with PROEIL here:

μὴ ἔλαττον ἐτῶν ἑξήκοντα γεγονυῖα, ἑνὸς ἀνδρὸς γυνή
Well, they side in the association of γενονυῖα, but they are ambiguous as to the scope of the negator.
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Re: 1 Tim 5:9 Scope of μή

Post by Jonathan Robie »

Stephen Carlson wrote:
Jonathan Robie wrote:I read this as:

(μὴ (ἔλαττον ἐτῶν ἑξήκοντα))
(not (having become less than 60 years old))
What happened to γεγονυῖα? Does this mean option 2, that μή scopes with the complement of the participle but not the participle itself? Why do you read it that way?
I think PROIEL probably has it right for this verse: (γεγονυῖα (μὴ (ἔλαττον ἐτῶν ἑξήκοντα))), which is your Option 2 ("having become not less than sixty years").

What I showed above is the part that both treebanks have in common.
Stephen Carlson wrote:
Jonathan Robie wrote:This is also the reading of the Global Bible Initiative treebank (formerly known a ABSo) and of Dag Haug's PROIEL treebank.
How can these be accessed?
The data is in github for each, if you are comfortable with XML.
The PROIEL web application shows nice graphical trees per verse, you have to register. They look like this:
1tim5.9.png
1tim5.9.png (64.85 KiB) Viewed 1925 times
I have put up an HTML-based representation of the GBI trees that you can use for comparison.

I don't know if any of the Alpheios folks have treebanked 1 Timothy 5:9, it's possible. It's nice to be able to compare analyses at this level.
Stephen Carlson wrote:
Jonathan Robie wrote:GBI construes γεγονυῖα with ἑνὸς ἀνδρὸς γυνή:

(γεγονυῖα (ἑνὸς ἀνδρὸς γυνή))
Presumably the widow is no longer the wife of one man, so how would the perfect make sense on this parsing?
I think it's a bug. Randall may comment on this.
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Barry Hofstetter
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Re: 1 Tim 5:9 Scope of μή

Post by Barry Hofstetter »

Stephen Carlson wrote:
1 Tim 5:9 wrote:Χήρα καταλεγέσθω μὴ ἔλαττον ἐτῶν ἑξήκοντα γεγονυῖα, ἑνὸς ἀνδρὸς γυνή, ἐν ἔργοις καλοῖς μαρτυρουμένη,
What is the scope of μή? The whole participial phrase, as if: "not having become less than sixty years old"? Or just the complement, as if: "having become not less than sixty years old"?
I would take it as modifying ἔλαττον, "no less than 60 years of age..."
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Re: 1 Tim 5:9 Scope of μή

Post by cwconrad »

There's no accusative, but I've always assumed that this is a Greek equivalent to the Latin expression, "LX annos natus" = "60 years old"'; I take the expression μὴ ἔλαττον ἐτῶν ἑξήκοντα γεγονυῖα = ἥκιστά γε ἑξήκοντα ἔτη γεγονυῖα. cf. LSJ s.v. γίγνομαι
1 of persons, to be born , … freq. with Numerals, ἔτεα τρία καὶ δέκα γεγονώς Hdt.1.119 ; ἀμφὶ τὰ πέντε ἢ ἑκκαίδεκα ἔτη γενόμενος X.Cyr.1.4.16 ; γεγονὼς ἔτη περὶ πεντήκοντα D. 21.154 ; οἱ ὑπὲρ τὰ στρατεύσιμα ἔτη γεγονότες those of an age beyond . ., X.Cyr.1.2.4 : c. gen., γεγονὼς πλειόνων ἐτῶν ἢ πεντήκοντα Pl.Lg. 951c , etc.: rarely with ordinals, ὀγδοηκοστὸν ἔτος γεγονώς Luc.Macr. 22 , cf. Plu.Phil.18 .
οὔτοι ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς πάντα θεοὶ θνητοῖς ὑπέδειξαν,
ἀλλὰ χρόνῳ ζητέοντες ἐφευρίσκουσιν ἄμεινον. (Xenophanes, Fragment 16)

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