Re: 'widower' (was Introductory)

Jonathan Robie (jwrobie@mindspring.com)
Tue, 18 Nov 1997 06:32:20 -0500

At 09:32 PM 11/17/97 -0800, Micheal Palmer wrote:

>I am really not sure about the New Testament period, but in Modern Greek
>the work CHROS means 'widower'. It's just the masculine form of CHRA
>('widow'--the nominative singular form of TAIS CHRAIS). I'm pretty sure
>CHROS does not appear in the New Testament, but does it appear anywhere in
>the hellenistic literature outside the New Testament?

Here's what I know:

1. LSJ says that that the masculine form CHROS occurs "later" and cites three texts.

later masc. XHROS widower,
Arist. HA 612b34 (of birds),
Call. Epigr. 17,
Gramm. post Hdn. Epim. 286

2. A search on Perseus reveals 19 "possible" occurrences in the primary texts, but most of these use the feminine form; the exceptions are all in Strabo, who is in the Hellenistic period. See these results, if interested:

"http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/wordsearch?lookup=xh/ra&lang=Greek&corpus=2.0"

That's all I know...

Jonathan