Re: A question about tombs

From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Fri Apr 02 1999 - 11:49:27 EST


At 9:56 AM -0500 4/2/99, Perry L. Stepp wrote:
>From: Bill Ross <wross@farmerstel.com>
>
>
>>>TAFOS resonates with the funeral rites
>>>MNEMEIOU has a sense of a memorial
>
>
>>{Perry}
>>Bill, what's your reasoning behind assigning these words different nuances/
>>theological implications?
>
>
>>{Bill}
>>The commonality of the words is easily proven from the overlapping usage.
>>As I mentioned, the different nuances relate to their *origins.*
>
>
>The only dependable way to find a word's meaning is to study its *usage*,
>working in concentric circles from the writer in question to the writers in
>his/her immediate milieu (in this case, the New Testament) to other
>Christian and Jewish religious writers to the writers of Koine literature in
>general. Etymology and word origins are secondary resources for finding a
>word's meaning, and can often be misleading.

At the risk of sounding terribly pedantic, I'd like to reiterate what I
said a couple days ago about the value of STUDYING LSJG and BAGD
definition-entries for words and grasping the full-range of overlap and
differentiation. Etymology can be very valuable for some words and very
misleading for others. It takes some will-power to overcome the urge to
look for the first applicable meaning of a Greek word in a lexicon and let
it go at that rather than taking the time to see how the meaning that fits
the instance in question relates to all the other meanings of a word.

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
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/

---
B-Greek home page: http://sunsite.unc.edu/bgreek
You are currently subscribed to b-greek as: [cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu]
To unsubscribe, forward this message to leave-b-greek-329W@franklin.oit.unc.edu
To subscribe, send a message to subscribe-b-greek@franklin.oit.unc.edu


This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Sat Apr 20 2002 - 15:40:22 EDT