ὁμο-μήτωρ and ὁμο-πάτηρ

Semantic Range, Lexicography, and other approaches to word meaning - in general, or for particular words.
leonardjayawardena
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Joined: June 9th, 2014, 12:52 am

ὁμο-μήτωρ and ὁμο-πάτηρ

Post by leonardjayawardena »

I saw the following in Liddell-Scott-Jones Greek-English Lexicon (at stephanus.tlg.uci.edu/lsj/):

ὁμο-μήτωρ, ορος, ὁ, ἡ, = foreg., Orph.Fr.15, Poll.3.23.

ὁμο-πάτηρ [ᾰ], πάτερος, = sq., GDI4972 (Crete).

What do the abbreviations "foreg." and "sq." above stand for?

ὁμο-μήτωρ does not appear in the referenced passages. Why so?

Does anyone know of any Greek passages in which ὁμο-μήτωρ (half-brother by the same mother) and ὁμο-πάτηρ (half-brother by the same father) are used?
Barry Hofstetter
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Re: ὁμο-μήτωρ and ὁμο-πάτηρ

Post by Barry Hofstetter »

I don't know of any Greek passages that use these words, but foreg. means "foregoing" and sq. means "following" (from the Latin sequor, "to follow). It's referencing the previous and following entries in the lexicon.
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.
Stephen Hughes
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Knowing the torque ratio of a car doesn't help you drive it.

Post by Stephen Hughes »

leonardjayawardena wrote:ὁμο-μήτωρ does not appear in the referenced passages. Why so?

Does anyone know of any Greek passages in which ὁμο-μήτωρ (half-brother by the same mother) and ὁμο-πάτηρ (half-brother by the same father) are used?
You can see the referenced passages in Thomas Morell, Lexicon Græco-Prosodiacum olim vulgatum, Volume II, page 708 - ὁμομήτωρ

If you are going to use this information for anything other than your own personal edification, I suggest that you make a serious study of the language.

There are a lot of people walking around with their shoes on the wrong feet and their sock on their hands, because they got some Greek from a computer programme or from the internet, then thought it would be a good adornment for their arguments. Now, to people who don't know Greek and also download and use search engines to parse, but are unable to either read a text themselves to both understand it and to extract information from it or to understand someone who does, such quotations from Greek in their arguments sound plausible and even authoritative, but to people who do know even a little Greek (well), such inclusions (in effect intrusions) of Greek into the arguments look altogether quite odd.

It is like as if someone quoted the torque ratio of a production car, when they were trying to prove that the best way to get from point A to Point B was along such and so a road.

It is also very easy to spot the people in a restaurant, who don't come often, or who are there for the first time. They are the ones talking about the restaurant. Then those who come sometimes, but are not familiar with the cuisine, they talk about the food. Then there are those who are familiar with the restaurant and the food, who talk about what they really want to talk about. By analogy, you can tell how much Greek someone knows, by the way they talk about it.
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
Stephen Hughes
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Plutarch reference

Post by Stephen Hughes »

Sorry, I had this, but forgot to include it

Plutarch, De fraterno, page 252
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
Jonathan Robie
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Re: ὁμο-μήτωρ and ὁμο-πάτηρ

Post by Jonathan Robie »

FWIW, I found several references to ὁμομήτωρ on Bruce Robertson's Lace site, but not ὁμοπάτηρ.
ἐξίσταντο δὲ πάντες καὶ διηποροῦντο, ἄλλος πρὸς ἄλλον λέγοντες, τί θέλει τοῦτο εἶναι;
http://jonathanrobie.biblicalhumanities.org/
Barry Hofstetter
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Re: Knowing the torque ratio of a car doesn't help you drive

Post by Barry Hofstetter »

Stephen Hughes wrote:
leonardjayawardena wrote:ὁμο-μήτωρ does not appear in the referenced passages. Why so?

Does anyone know of any Greek passages in which ὁμο-μήτωρ (half-brother by the same mother) and ὁμο-πάτηρ (half-brother by the same father) are used?
You can see the referenced passages in Thomas Morell, Lexicon Græco-Prosodiacum olim vulgatum, Volume II, page 708 - ὁμομήτωρ

If you are going to use this information for anything other than your own personal edification, I suggest that you make a serious study of the language.

There are a lot of people walking around with their shoes on the wrong feet and their sock on their hands, because they got some Greek from a computer programme or from the internet, then thought it would be a good adornment for their arguments. Now, to people who don't know Greek and also download and use search engines to parse, but are unable to either read a text themselves to both understand it and to extract information from it or to understand someone who does, such quotations from Greek in their arguments sound plausible and even authoritative, but to people who do know even a little Greek (well), such inclusions (in effect intrusions) of Greek into the arguments look altogether quite odd.

It is like as if someone quoted the torque ratio of a production car, when they were trying to prove that the best way to get from point A to Point B was along such and so a road.

It is also very easy to spot the people in a restaurant, who don't come often, or who are there for the first time. They are the ones talking about the restaurant. Then those who come sometimes, but are not familiar with the cuisine, they talk about the food. Then there are those who are familiar with the restaurant and the food, who talk about what they really want to talk about. By analogy, you can tell how much Greek someone knows, by the way they talk about it.
This illustration is worth its weight in gold talents.
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.
leonardjayawardena
Posts: 21
Joined: June 9th, 2014, 12:52 am

Re: ὁμο-μήτωρ and ὁμο-πάτηρ

Post by leonardjayawardena »

Stephen

While I thank you for the links to the relevant Greek passages, I must express my surprise at the rest of your response to my post requesting answers to a few simple questions. I don't know what set you off but I was immediately reminded of Proverbs 18:13 (ὃς ἀποκρίνεται λόγον πρὶν ἀκοῦσαι, ἀφροσύνη αὐτῷ ἐστι καὶ ὄνειδος). :)

In response to my request for the ancient Greek words for "step-brother" and "step-sister" (in a different but related thread) you informed me that ἀδελφὸς οὐχ ὁμοπάτριος and ἀδελφὸς οὐχ ὁμομήτριος are used for a step-brother. For a "step-sister" it would be the same, of course, mutatis mutandis. Now since this is like catching your nose the other way round, simpler expressions would be ἀδελφὸς ὁμοπάτριος (=and ἀδελφὸς οὐχ ὁμομήτριος) and ἀδελφὸς ὁμομήτριος (=ἀδελφὸς οὐχ ὁμοπάτριος), which I in fact saw in certain ancient Greek texts on the Internet.

Now there are these two single words for step-siblings, ὁμομήτωρ and ὁμοπάτηρ, which you didn't mention.

The entry for ὁμομήτωρ in the "Online Liddell-Scott-Jones Greek-English Lexicon" at the website stephanus.tlg.uci.edu/lsj/ provides links to Orph.Fr.15, Poll.3.23. Due to some error the link to the first, when clicked, opens not to the referenced passage but to "Orphica Lithica," in which ὁμομήτωρ does not appear. That is why I didn't see the word. When you click the second reference, the highlighted portion of the text that appears again does not contain ὁμομήτωρ but it does appear about ten words down as homomêtores. That is why I missed it.

With regard to ὁμοπάτηρ, the lexicon makes a reference to "GDI4972 (Crete)," but since there is no link given and I couldn't figure out what it was anyway, I checked the two linked references for ὁμοπάτωρ shown in the same entry in the lexicon: Pl.Lg.924e, Is.11.1. The first opens to a passage from Book VI of Plato's Laws, but what appears in the highlighted text there is ἀδελφῶν ὁμοπατρίων ("brothers who have the same father"), where ὁμοπατρίων is a form of ὁμοπάτριος (adjective), not ὁμοπάτωρ. The second linked reference (Is.11.1) opens to a page containing text in which ὁμοπάτωρ does not appear at all.

My interest in these two words (ὁμομήτωρ and ὁμοπάτηρ) was just to see them actually used in some Greek text as single words. My chief interest is the use of ἀδελφὸς and adelphê alone in ancient Greek to refer to step-siblings, as I indicated in the other thread. I think I have found what I was looking for in Antiphon's (the orator) Φαρμακείας κατὰ τῆς μητρυιᾶς ("Against the Stepmother for Poisoning"), where the words ἀδελφοῖς ὁμοπατρίοις καὶ μητρὶ ἀδελφῶν ("my half-brothers and their mother") occur in 1.1. Thereafter throughout the rest of the speech a particular step-brother who is engaged in litigation with the speaker is referred to as simply ἀδελφός in sections 5, 14 and 21. It would appear from this that in ancient Greek once a person is identified as someone's step-brother or step-sister, ἀδελφός alone would suffice for any further references to him, that is, it was not necessary to attach the adjective ὁμοπάτριος or ὁμομήτριος everytime he or she was referred to.

I wrote in the other post
In an article on the subject of whether Jesus had blood siblings or not, a writer who holds that ἀδελφός in the New Testatament may be used in a wider sense than the classical Greek sense of "blood brother" argues that if the writers of the New Testament had wanted to be precise they could have used Greek words such as homopatôr ("half-brother by the father") or homomêtôr ("half-brother by the mother"), but they didn't. For example, James could have been called homomêtôr of Jesus instead of ἀδελφός [in Galatians 1:19].
That writer thinks that the Hebrew and Aramaic word ah (rough transliteration) may underlie the use of ἀδελφός in the NT in passages referring to "brothers" of Jesus, which means they are not necessarily blood brothers. In Hebrew and Aramaic ah is not restricted to blood brothers.

I hold that the adelphoi and adelphai of Jesus in the New Testament refer to his step-siblings and that it can be argued on the basis of texts such as Antiphon's Φαρμακείας κατὰ τῆς μητρυιᾶς that the use of these two words in that sense conforms to ancient Greek usage. It is true that Jesus' step-siblings are not identified as such with ὁμομήτριος in the NT writings but their precise relationship could be inferred from the nativity stories by the first readers of Matthew and Luke. As for Mark, John and certain epistles of the NT, where the virgin birth is not mentioned, one may assume that the precise circumstances of Jesus' birth were such common knowledge among the readers of these writings in the first century that the use of ὁμομήτριος even once would have been superfluous. There are also the following linguistic arguments:

1. Jesus said, παραδοθήσεσθε δὲ καὶ ὑπὸ γονέων καὶ ἀδελφῶν καὶ συγγενῶν καὶ φίλων (Luke 21:16), where ἀδελφῶν καὶ συγγενῶν are distinguished.

2. When describing Mark as Barnabas' "cousin," the apostle Paul uses anepsios in Colossians 4:10, but he refers to James as "the Lord's [Jesus'] brother [adelphos]" in Galatians 1:19. In 1 Corinthians 9:5, Paul refers to "the brothers of the Lord" (adelphoi), i.e., James, Joses (=Joseph), Judas and Simon.

In both cases, ἀδελφός is clearly used in the narrower classical Greek sense of "blood brother."

However, there are passages in the NT where the Hebrew and Aramaic ah does seem to underlie ἀδελφός. For example, in Acts 13:26 Paul addresses fellow Jews as "brothers" as being children of the same fathers Abraham and Israel. Similarly, fellow Christians are "brothers" as they share the same spiritual Father.

In conclusion, I would say that both the classical Greek and the Hebrew/Aramaic usages underlie the use of ἀδελφός in the NT and which is which in a given case has to determined by an examination of the relevant context.

Any comments?

Leonard Jayawardena
Stephen Hughes
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Re: ὁμο-μήτωρ and ὁμο-πάτηρ

Post by Stephen Hughes »

ὁμοπάτριος (adjective), not ὁμοπάτωρ

These are both adjectives. cf. ἀπάτωρ "without a fahter", ἀμήτωρ "without a mother", ἀγενεαλόγητος "without communal recognition / registration of birth"
Hebrews 7:3 wrote:ἀπάτωρ, ἀμήτωρ, ἀγενεαλόγητος, μήτε ἀρχὴν ἡμερῶν μήτε ζωῆς τέλος ἔχων, ἀφωμοιωμένος δὲ τῷ υἱῷ τοῦ θεοῦ — μένει ἱερεὺς εἰς τὸ διηνεκές.
ὁμοπάτριος is more for prose, ὁμοπάτωρ more for poetry.
leonardjayawardena wrote:
Stephen Hughes wrote:It is like as if someone quoted the torque ratio of a production car, when they were trying to prove that the best way to get from point A to Point B was along such and so a road.
I must express my surprise at the rest of your response to my post requesting answers to a few simple questions. I don't know what set you off but I was immediately reminded of Proverbs 18:13 (ὃς ἀποκρίνεται λόγον πρὶν ἀκοῦσαι, ἀφροσύνη αὐτῷ ἐστι καὶ ὄνειδος). :)
Nobody has any doubt that I'm foolish, least of all myself. You are looking at a very obscure point of the language (used in another time period) to prove a general feature. It's like the 18th and 19th century English visitors to Greece using Pausanius to find their way around. The topic of half-brothers is never a simple one. I'm not discouraging you from saying what you want to say about the topic using Greek, but giving you my perspective of the majority of people who use Greek as part of their proofs and/or explanations.
Stephen Hughes wrote:It is also very easy to spot the people in a restaurant, who don't come often, or who are there for the first time. They are the ones talking about the restaurant. Then those who come sometimes, but are not familiar with the cuisine, they talk about the food. Then there are those who are familiar with the restaurant and the food, who talk about what they really want to talk about. By analogy, you can tell how much Greek someone knows, by the way they talk about it.
If you do have ideas that you want to publish your ideas using Greek, use as little as possible. By knowing Greek as a language, you will know how much other people already know and you will not need to mention those things when you introduce Greek into what you want to say.
leonardjayawardena wrote:My interest in these two words (ὁμομήτωρ and ὁμοπάτηρ) was just to see them actually used in some Greek text as single words. My chief interest is the use of ἀδελφὸς and adelphê alone in ancient Greek to refer to step-siblings, as I indicated in the other thread. I think I have found what I was looking for in Antiphon's (the orator) Φαρμακείας κατὰ τῆς μητρυιᾶς ("Against the Stepmother for Poisoning"), where the words ἀδελφοῖς ὁμοπατρίοις καὶ μητρὶ ἀδελφῶν ("my half-brothers and their mother") occur in 1.1. Thereafter throughout the rest of the speech a particular step-brother who is engaged in litigation with the speaker is referred to as simply ἀδελφός in sections 5, 14 and 21. It would appear from this that in ancient Greek once a person is identified as someone's step-brother or step-sister, ἀδελφός alone would suffice for any further references to him, that is, it was not necessary to attach the adjective ὁμοπάτριος or ὁμομήτριος everytime he or she was referred to.
That is a legal case. A time when definitions and language have to be exact. Like engineering specifications for the design of a car. This was also written in Athens over 400 years earlier than the period usually discussed on B-Greek, so you will need a little more theoretical framework to deal with them. It is also refers to the situation of digamy, not to polygamy - which may or may not be expressed in the same way.

Your question is like asking, "Does the single word 'car' ever refer to 'sports car'? Then you read an article in a magazine and you find that it does. The taxonomy of language means that once a specific meaning is established, it doesn't need to be referred to with the same degree of exactitude again and again. The inexact word having the exact meaning is only valid for that one situation. Analoguously, that particular restaurant is like the flaming-grill BBQ steak house - or any other self-cooking restaurant - If you get take-away to eat in the car, then you end up eating raw meat.
leonardjayawardena wrote:GDI4972 (Crete)
These sort of things are references to incriptions or papyri. They are often not easy to find online.
Γελᾷ δ' ὁ μωρός, κἄν τι μὴ γέλοιον ᾖ
(Menander, Γνῶμαι μονόστιχοι 108)
leonardjayawardena
Posts: 21
Joined: June 9th, 2014, 12:52 am

Re: ὁμο-μήτωρ and ὁμο-πάτηρ

Post by leonardjayawardena »

I wrote in the earlier post
However, there are passages in the NT where the Hebrew and Aramaic ah does seem to underlie ἀδελφός. For example, in Acts 13:26 Paul addresses fellow Jews as "brothers" as being children of the same fathers Abraham and Israel. Similarly, fellow Christians are "brothers" as they share the same spiritual Father.
On second thoughts, I think fellow Christians being called brothers in the New Testament is a special extension by Christians of the classical Greek sense of ἀδελφός since God is the immediate spiritual Father of all believers.

Leonard Jayawardena
leonardjayawardena
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Joined: June 9th, 2014, 12:52 am

Re: ὁμο-μήτωρ and ὁμο-πάτηρ

Post by leonardjayawardena »

I wrote in my penultimate post
My chief interest is the use of ἀδελφὸς and adelphê alone in ancient Greek to refer to step-siblings, as I indicated in the other thread. I think I have found what I was looking for in Antiphon's (the orator) Φαρμακείας κατὰ τῆς μητρυιᾶς ("Against the Stepmother for Poisoning"), where the words ἀδελφοῖς ὁμοπατρίοις καὶ μητρὶ ἀδελφῶν ("my half-brothers and their mother") occur in 1.1. Thereafter throughout the rest of the speech a particular step-brother who is engaged in litigation with the speaker is referred to as simply ἀδελφός in sections 5, 14 and 21. It would appear from this that in ancient Greek once a person is identified as someone's step-brother or step-sister, ἀδελφός alone would suffice for any further references to him, that is, it was not necessary to attach the adjective ὁμοπάτριος or ὁμομήτριος everytime he or she was referred to.
There was an example right under my nose and I missed it: In Mark 6:17 Philip is called Herod's adelphos, though in fact he was his step-brother.

Leonard Jayawardena
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