Re: PLANHTHS in Jude 13f

From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Sun Jan 11 1998 - 20:50:02 EST


At 3:15 PM -0600 1/11/98, Ben Crick wrote:
> My GNT (Nestle-Kilpatrick) gives "EPROF. B*(aleph), R] PROEF. rell [sigma]"
> in the App. Crit. The preferred text has EPROFHTEUSEN. Is this a phenomenon
> common in NT Greek, rather like separable and inseparable prefixes with
> German verbs? Is PROFHTEUW optionally treated as a compound of PRO + FHMI?
> I don't suppose it affects the meaning.

A quick Accordance search for PROFHTEUW in the aorist indicative in the GNT
brings up seven instances, six of them showing augment before PRO and only
the Jude 13 passage showing it between PRO and the FHTEUS(A) stem. There
doesn't seem to be a reason to doubt that the older reading in Jude 13 is
really PROEFHTEUSEN, although it is, shall we say, "irregular." The reason
this is not an ordinary compound verb is that it is a denominative from the
noun PROFHTHS, with the -EU/ additive to create a present stem of the
standard type from agent nouns (BASILEUS-->BASILEUW,
GRAMMATEUS-->GRAMMATEUW), but there is no verb FHTEUW to which a prefix PRO
was added. PROFHTHS itself was formed from the verbal root FH (FHMI) with
the adverbial prefix PRO, but the verb PROFHTEUW from the noun. So in this
verb the PRO is not really a prefix, but the author of Jude thought that it
was and wrote the aorist from that supposition. The only verb that comes
readily to my mind that appears to be a compound but evidently isn't is
EPISTAMAI, "know." If it were a compound of EPI and hISTAMAI, then the P
should be an F (a Phi), but it is a compound directly of EPI and the verbal
root STA, and it is always augmented by lengthening the E to H.

The sort of grammatical "mistake" made by the author in Jude is an
interesting instance of an "educated mistake" of the sort that most of us
make at one time or another: the one I got caught making just last week was
spelling "supersede" as "supercede." So used am I to thinking of English
verbs derived from Latin CEDO (concede, recede, accede, proceed) that I
assumed this was one of the group. Turns out, however, its from Latin
SUPERSEDEO, "to sit on another's seat in his/her place." It would appear
that the MS readings offering EPROFHTEUSEN in Jude 14 are later copyists'
emendations of the erroneous grammatical form that stood in the MS(S) from
which they were copying.

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics/Washington University
One Brookings Drive/St. Louis, MO, USA 63130/(314) 935-4018
Home: 7222 Colgate Ave./St. Louis, MO 63130/(314) 726-5649
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu OR cconrad@yancey.main.nc.us
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/



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