Errors In Revelation?

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Barry Hofstetter
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Re: Errors In Revelation?

Post by Barry Hofstetter »

Peter Streitenberger wrote: November 8th, 2017, 8:30 am We should agree that we disagree, at least I disagree with your last statement. These examples are clear and parallels to Rev. - so the claim of solecim is false, as there are no examples of this kind of nouns being modified by feminine adjectives (only as in Rev, masculine) and you could not falsify that, so the claim is to be maintained: no blunder at John, he did it in accordance with the usage of these kind of nouns, which is clearly paralled in some examples, even if you do not like them, as it seems, but you could not talk them away, as we Germans say and your exlanantion for it - at least I cant see it to be correct. So I suggest, as the case is settled (at least for me) and I dont expect any more rationale - we could come to another example or we conclude that I found no blunder in the Rev., no solecism no ungrammatical issues, if folks do so, they have no clue in Greek Grammar (dangerous half knowledge) or dont trust the text or the one behind it or whatever reasons they might have. What do you suggest? Please no more on this - better another, ok?
That's fine, Peter, although I will note that you haven't answered the arguments, but simply repeated your assertions. You also miss the main point, which is that the the feminine noun, clearly marked as such by the article, is then immediately modified by a masculine adjective. You can agree to disagree, but you should realize that your evidence is far from clear cut support and will likely convince no one.
N.E. Barry Hofstetter, M.A., Th.M.
Ph.D. Student U of FL
Instructor of Latin
Jack M. Barrack Hebrew Academy
καὶ σὺ τὸ σὸν ποιήσεις κἀγὼ τὸ ἐμόν. ἆρον τὸ σὸν καὶ ὕπαγε.
Peter Streitenberger
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Re: Errors In Revelation?

Post by Peter Streitenberger »

|clearly marked as such by the article, is then immediately modified by a masculine adjective
It has always been all about that and that was proven and no counter example were given by you: τὴν ληνὸν was modified by the maskuline τὸν μέγαν, you have claimed that this is wrong or a solecism, without any proof of your false claim. Enough parallels were given, to show the correctness of Johns usage. if you don't accept that, I cant help. Causa est finita. The error is on your side, not on Johns side.
Barry Hofstetter
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Re: Errors In Revelation?

Post by Barry Hofstetter »

Peter Streitenberger wrote: November 8th, 2017, 9:09 am |clearly marked as such by the article, is then immediately modified by a masculine adjective
It has always been all about that and that was proven and no counter example were given by you: τὴν ληνὸν was modified by the maskuline τὸν μέγαν, you have claimed that this is wrong or a solecism, without any proof of your false claim. Enough parallels were given, to show the correctness of Johns usage. if you don't accept that, I cant help. Causa est finita. The error is on your side, not on Johns side.
Again, you repeat your assertions without interacting with the arguments. Additionally, can you provide any examples outside the LXX which would support your claims?
N.E. Barry Hofstetter, M.A., Th.M.
Ph.D. Student U of FL
Instructor of Latin
Jack M. Barrack Hebrew Academy
καὶ σὺ τὸ σὸν ποιήσεις κἀγὼ τὸ ἐμόν. ἆρον τὸ σὸν καὶ ὕπαγε.
Peter Streitenberger
Posts: 224
Joined: June 3rd, 2011, 10:45 am

Re: Errors In Revelation?

Post by Peter Streitenberger »

>Again, you repeat your assertions without interacting with the arguments. Additionally, can you provide any >examples outside the LXX which would support your claims?
There was not one argument, counter example and so forth - so how to interact with something not present? I probably could find more, but I dont want to spend more time any more on that and enough is enough, at some point one has to do something else and life time is running out. I actually like doing TLG searches, but only if I can see a reason for it. If you want, please go on with the next "solecism". I think I did more than necessary to decide the case and I have no hope of insight on your side, even if all is Crystal clear, and even if TLG searches would bring up millions of more examples (I exaggerate of course). Yours Peter
RandallButh
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Re: Errors In Revelation?

Post by RandallButh »

On adjectives with -ος shaped nouns treated as feminine, the adjectives are regularly feminine.

E.g. Josephus Antiq. 2:339 θείας ὁδοῦ "divine path"

and Antiq 2:342 is rich in examples:

Αἰγύπτιοι δ᾿ ἐλάνθανον, ἰδίαν ὁδὸν Ἑβραίοις γεγενημένην, ἀλλ᾿ οὐχὶ κοινὴν, ἐπεμβαίνοντες, καὶ μέχρι σωτηρίας τῶν κεκινδυνευκότων πεποιημένην

"but the Egyptians were unaware, getting on a peculiar road made for Hebrews, and not a common road, made for the deliverance of those in danger,"
tdbenedict
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Re: Errors In Revelation?

Post by tdbenedict »

Two questions, as I am having a hard time following the discussion.

1. Is there a general treatment of the grammatical phenomena under discussion here (fem noun/masc modifier, at least as it appears to me) in Smyth or other similar standard grammar? I would like to look it up and educate myself.

2. Is there any consensus among respected commentators on the Greek text on whether Rev 14.19 is a solecism or not?

Tim
Tim Benedict
RandallButh
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Re: syntactic errors In Revelation?

Post by RandallButh »

1. nouns have an inherent gender classification based on agreed usage rather than form. (Gender is technically an adjective-noun class, of which Greek has three. Some languages have 1, some 2, some three, some like Bantu have several noun classes.) ὁδός is "feminine" although its shape belongs to the -ος noun pattern. Most –ος pattern nouns are "masculine".
Adjectives and articles that are part of a noun phrase will match the gender classification, "masculine" with "masculine", "feminine" with "feminine", and "neuter" with "neuter". This agreement concord is not according to a noun's form but according to its classification. So θείας ὁδοῦ "divine path"(genitive singular feminine) above is normal, standard Greek.

2. There is consensus on this, and Greek speakers throughout the ages have used this system.

However, occasionally there are changes in the classification through agreed usage.
Individual users may also create an idiolect by using something unique to themselves and sub-dialects may sometimes arise where items are used against the grain of the majority of users. One sees a 'sub-dialect' in some of the LXX examples that Peter quoted.
But Revelation 14:19 is doubly strange because the word is treated as a feminine at the beginning, in agreement with most Greek users of the period and throughout history, but then after four words switches to a different classification. This is something that sometimes occurs in live, conversational speech by speakers of a language with noun genders. Speakers will occasionally mismatch items, especially as the concord item is farther away in a sentence/speech or the speaker may also be thinking of a synonym from another gender class and the adjective is fitted to the implicit word without thought and automatically. Second-language users may do this 10times, even a 100 times, more often than a mother-tongue speaker. In normal speech no one goes back and corrects these unless meaning is compromised. However, when editing for writing they are typically corrected/regularized.

Revelation 14:19 has another feature to discuss. In the Byzantine Text, copied throughout the Greek-speaking world, the phrase reads: καὶ ἔβαλεν εἰς τὴν ληνὸν τοῦ θυμοῦ τοῦ Θεοῦ τὴν μεγάλην.
Please note: the adjective τὴν μεγάλην is feminine, thus agreeing with τὴν ληνόν "winepress".
FWIW: p47 reads τοῦ μεγάλου, modifying "God" or "wrath".
Peter Streitenberger
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Re: Errors In Revelation?

Post by Peter Streitenberger »

Dear Randall, Barry and the rest of the band,

thanks! I have to agree with your interpretation and it made me think over the whole issue and I hope to be able to think more clearly now.

To add a further example in Flavius, unfortunately not completely clear to decide in Josephus is the following:

Wars of the Jews 3:214 ὁ (note: ὁ refers to ὁ κριός in the sentence before) δ᾽ ἐστὶν ὑπερμεγέθης δοκὸς ἱστῷ νηὸς παραπλήσιος ἐστόμωται δὲ παχεῖ σιδήρῳ κατ᾽ ἄκρον εἰς κριοῦ προτομήν ἀφ᾽ οὗ καὶ καλεῖται τετυπωμένῳ
This battering ram is a vast beam of wood like the mast of a ship; its forepart is armed with a thick piece of iron at the head of it, which is so carved as to be like the head of a ram, from which its name is taken.

The η δοκὸς modifying adjective is ὑπερμεγέθης. In all instances of the LXX and the NT this word is used with the feminine article and Josephus himself does so: τὰς δοκοὺς in Antiquities of the Jews 8:68. So this word fits the criteria of the word John used and belongs into that group of nouns.

Then ὑπερμεγέθης is at least in my database of Bibleworks coded as "annmsn", so counted as masculine (a=adjective, n=normal, n=nominative, m=masculine.....). If they count it as masculine I do as well - trusting their coding competence, :-) - and the Josephus data, even if not 100% clear as the LXX examples. Not completely convincing this example, granted.

Here another writer, Philo, doing much the same as John in Rev.:

Quaestiones in Genesim (fragment. 2:13 ἵνα, θεασάμενοι τὴν κιβωτὸν ἀντίμιμον γῆς ἕνεκα τοῦ καιροῦ γενομένην καὶ τὰ τῶν ζῴων γένη ταμιεύουσαν ὧν ἔφερεν ἡ γῆ τὰ κατὰ μέρος εἴδη,
in order that when they see the ark placed in front of them as a sort of type, made with respect to the then present time

Here is what I was after: τὴν κιβωτὸν in combination with the masculine ἀντίμιμον.

Then, same writer, same lexeme as Flavius but used in the Johns way with an masculine modifier:
De opificio mundi 1:69
καὶ τέχναις καὶ ἐπιστήμαις πολυσχιδεῖς ἀνατέμνων ὁδοὺς λεωφόρους ἁπάσας διὰ γῆς ἔρχεται καὶ θαλάττης τὰ ἐν ἑκατέρᾳ φύσει διερευνώμενος;
and making for itself by art and science all sorts of roads leading in divers directions, and all plain; it traverses land and sea, investigating everything which is contained in either element.
With πολυσχιδεῖς counted as masculine in my database of BW.

De vita Mosis 1:170
ἐχθροὶ δ᾽ ἀντικρύ, τὰ δὲ παρ᾽ ἑκάτερα βαθεῖα καὶ ἀτριβὴς ἐρήμη σφαδᾴζοντες καὶ τῷ μεγέθει τῶν κακῶν ἀπειρηκότες, οἷα παρὰ τοιαύτας φιλεῖ συμφοράς, τὸν ἄρχοντα ᾐτιῶντο φάσκοντες·
and not being able to escape, for behind was the sea, and in front was the enemy, and on each side a vast and pathless wilderness, reviled against Moses, and, being dismayed at the magnitude of the evils that threatened them, began, as is very common in such calamities, to blame their governors, and said:
While ἀτριβὴς is coded "annmsn", as masculine, at least in my database.

The intervention of Randall made me sober again after being so worried about the statement that John did something wrong, not being the case at all, after all what I have found.

I want to apologize here to Barry as my harsh and unfriendly tone was not ok, resulting from my anger on the statement of error in the Rev., where I did not find one, having found many parallels for each case.

So I am happy to have learned that lesson and I accept the correction. But my overall statement remains untouched: it is not ungrammatically or solecistic as the many parallel examples showed, what John did. So I still don`t believe the solecism claim completely. My tone, this I believe, was not ok and arrogant. Barry, apology accepted? One should not write with anger inside, better to calm down first. If still interest remains, I would try to defend each "solecism" case, with the hope to do it better next time. But I have not tooooo much time, next time a bit shorter (I`m talking to myself), as other things are to be done as well.

Peter
Peter Streitenberger
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Re: Errors In Revelation?

Post by Peter Streitenberger »

Adressing Randalls remark on the byz Text, I prefer:

if the TON MEGAN were so erroneous at that point:

Why then would the majority of scribes of the Greek MSS (ca. 60%, based on Hoskier's data) have changed a perfectly grammatical THN MEGALHN into the problematic TON MEGAN? - they wouldn't.

or, why then did a minority of scribes (ca. 24%, based on Hoskier) change a presumably original TON MEGAN into THN MEGALHN? Because they perceived a difficulty and decided to change to an "easier" reading.

Why would scribes prefer to make a reading *more* difficult when a less difficult option was available? This seems to more securely establish the TON MEGAN as the more difficult reading, and the one more likely to be altered.

Note also (from Hoskier's data) that 14% of the MSS changed THN LHNON into TON LHNON due to a similar perceived difficulty. All of which still points to TON MEGAN being the original modifier of THN LHNON.

Some might not like it, but apparently the majority of scribes had no major problem with such.
Barry Hofstetter
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Re: Errors In Revelation?

Post by Barry Hofstetter »

Peter, I have more to say on your examples above when I have time (about to read Lucretius with a group as part of a professional development course), but as to your apology, of course. I have never believed you to be intentionally arrogant or mean, just passionate about what you believe. I get that way occasionally myself, and try to read what I have written to see how it sounds. I usually wait a bit before posting, and occasionally find myself rewriting a bit... :)
N.E. Barry Hofstetter, M.A., Th.M.
Ph.D. Student U of FL
Instructor of Latin
Jack M. Barrack Hebrew Academy
καὶ σὺ τὸ σὸν ποιήσεις κἀγὼ τὸ ἐμόν. ἆρον τὸ σὸν καὶ ὕπαγε.
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