[b-greek] Re: 1st John 1.2 Grammar

From: Carlton Winbery (winberyc@speedgate.net)
Date: Sat Oct 14 2000 - 22:14:58 EDT


Carl Conrad responded to David B Spotts who wrote:
>>Greetings, all you who are clearly more prepared than I for this
>>question.
>>
>>I was helping my eighth graders look at the parsing of 1 John 1 and noted
>>the phrase THN ZWHN THN AIWNION. I am not familiar with any reason for
>>the masculine/neuter accusative for AIWNION, used as it is with a
>>feminine noun and a feminine article. Why not AIWNIHN?
>
>This one's relatively easy; AIWNIOS is a two-termination adjective,
>evidently because it's deemed a compound of AI (i.e. AEI or AIEI) + WN).
>There is at least one instance in Plato wherein it's deemed a regular
>3-termination adjective, AIWNIOS/A/ON, but normally the -OS forms do
>service for both masculine and feminine usage. It wouldn't be AIWNIHN in
>any case because the original -A- of the feminine endings remains -A- and
>doesn't change to -H- after an -I-, -E- or -R-.
>
>>I'd welcome a reference to a web-based resource that would help with
>>similar questions and keep you intelligent people from having to snicker
>>at my questions.
>
>For one like this on the web, it's easiest to go to the Perseus web-site's
>LSJ lexicon; although you can go to the Perseus site's "starting points"
>URL at
>
> http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/startingPoints.html
>
>if it's an entry in LSJ, it's quicker to start with
>
> http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/lexindex?entry=fe/rw
>
>>By the way, I really enjoy it when I have the opportunity to try to
>>follow a thread on this list. It helps me try to remember to think like
>>the Greek scholar I once was.
>
>I'd put it, "like the Greek scholar we aspire to be!"

Carl's answer is right on target as usual, but I want to add something to
it. The adjective AIWNIOS is one of several adjectives that vary between
being a first and second declension adjective to being just a second
declension adjective where the masculine/feminine has OS, OU endings. Some
others are hEDRAIOS, hETOIMOS, KOSMIOS, MATAIOS, OIKEIOS, PTHNOS, and
SKUQRWPOS. There are 322 adjectives in the NT that have forms in the class
that take only second declension endings. They are all listed in the
Morphology by Brooks and Winbery.


Dr. Carlton L. Winbery
Foggleman Professor of Religion
Louisiana College
winbery@speedgate.net
winbery@andria.lacollege.edu
Ph. 1 318 448 6103 hm
Ph. 1 318 487 7241 off



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