Here's another beginner question for you concerning 1st declension nouns. My introductory grammer (Basics of Biblical Greek by William D. Mounce) says on p.61 : "If a 1st declension word has a stem ending in alpha where the preceding letter is epsilon, iota, or rho, it will form the genitive and dative with an alpha. Otherwise, the alpha will shift to eta." And the example noun Mounce gives for this shift from alpha to eta is the 1st declension noun hH QALASSA (sea or lake), which in the genitive is THS QALASSHS. So I learned this rule and thought everything was fine, until I ran accross the word hH MACAIPA (sword), for which my lexicon has the genitive form THS MACAIPHS. Now MACAIPA is a first declension word which ends in alpha and has a preceding letter of rho. So the rule I quoted above makes me expect the genitive to be THS MACAIPAS. My first reaction was perhaps this was a misprint in the lexicon, but I found Luke 21:24 and 22:49, and Acts 12:2, which agree with the lexicon. So now I ask, is this an isolated exception to this rule, or is the rule I learned only partially correct? Thanks for your help. Erik Westwig westwig@palisade.com --- B-Greek home page: http://metalab.unc.edu/bgreek You are currently subscribed to b-greek as: [jwrobie@mindspring.com] To unsubscribe, forward this message to leave-b-greek-327Q@franklin.oit.unc.edu To subscribe, send a message to subscribe-b-greek@franklin.oit.unc.edu