[b-greek] Re: Apostrophe or Breathing Mark?

From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Sun Jul 22 2001 - 22:56:45 EDT


At 7:10 PM -0700 7/22/01, Richard Allan Stauch wrote:
>B-Greekers,
>
>I have been building a soft-copy set of the Apostolic Fathers in Greek
>(based on the Loeb Classical Library AFv1, edited by Goold), and I have run
>across a question that you will probably find very simple. Please accept my
>apologies for not already knowing the answer to this.
>
>In a few words I have noticed what looks like a smooth breathing mark, or an
>apostrophe, over a vowel in the middle of a word. This is definitely not a
>printing problem, with the words run so close together that they are hard to
>separate, or an accent mark messed up. Rather, it is definitely a
>comma-shaped figure over the vowel. And I don't mean words like AUTOU, where
>there is a diphthong at the beginning of the word. Two occurrences are:
> 2 Clement XV:1, the A in KAME
> Ignatius to the Ephesians XIV:1, the second A in KALOKAGAQIAN
>
>Could this be a holdover in a contraction (as opposed to a compound word)? A
>misprint? I have not yet seen it in the GNT. Could someone please explain
>this? Is there a pronunciation rule of which I should be aware?

Your intuitive guess comes pretty close to the truth; what you're seeing is
termed a "crasis" mark (KRASIS = "mixing" from verb KERANNUMI,
"mix/mingle").
In form it is indistinguishable from an acute accent, but it will only
appear on an internal vowel of a "word" that is in fact the fusion of two
originally distinct words. Thus, you find it over the A of KAME which is
"crasis" for KAI EME ("me also") where the -AI of KAI has fused with the E-
of EME. Similarly the crasis mark of the second A of KALOKAGAQIAN indicates
that this word involves fusion of KAI and AGAQ-, where the -AI of KAI has
fused with the A- of AGAQ-. This word is a noun form of what was originally
an adjectival phrase, KALOS KAI AGAQOS that occurs at least as early as the
6th century in classical Greek and is standard Attic for describing a
nobleman born and bred; it's not really translatable in any literal sense,
even if one tries to offer a literal rendering of it as "beautiful (in
appearance) and excellent (in behavior)"; the compound adjectival phrase
came in Attic to be written KALOKAGAQOS with a crasis mark over the second
alpha, and a noun KALOKAGAQIA was associated with the phrase to describe
the quality of a man who was deemed KALOKAGAQOS. There's nothing really
quite like it I know of in English that really approaches it, although some
of the flavor is shared by the archaic expression "a gentleman and a
scholar" or maybe Chaucer's "a very parfait gentle knight."

>Also, looking for help in BAGD for KALOKAGAQIA (nobility of character,
>excellence), I find the following reference I cannot understand: "Js 5:10
>v.1." I thought "Js" was "James", but I cannot find this word anywhere in
>the UBS GNT4 (and my 3rd Corrected Edition does not have any footnotes on
>this verse), nor in Scrivener's 1881 TR. It does occur once in 4 Maccabees
>15:9 (as well as Ignatius). Of course, there is no explanation in BAGD for
>the comma-like figure I mentioned above, nor do either BAGD or the version
>of LXX I have (Sir LCL Brenton, from Hendrickson) actually show this
>character (though the LXX shows an Iota subscript instead).

No, what's found in James 5:10 are two compound nouns, KAKOPAQIA and
MAKROQUMIA, which are somewhat like KALOKAGAQIA in formation in that they
are obviously abstract nouns created from compounded adjectives. Where
KALOKAGAQIA is very different from the others, however, is that the
original link between KALOS and AGAQOS, the KAI, is still present
syllabically. It may be the one or more late MSS show KALOKAGAQIA in place
of KAKOPAQIA, I don't know.
--

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
Most months: 1647 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu OR cwconrad@ioa.com
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/

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