From: Paul F. Evans (evans@mail.gld.com)
Date: Tue Feb 11 1997 - 07:42:18 EST
<html><html><head></head><BODY bgcolor="#FFFFFF"><p><font size=2 color="#000000" face="Arial">Carl,<br><br>My professor in NT Greek classes did not conduct any excursions into accents at all, except to note a few bits and pieces about "aspirations," (not the ambitious-to- pass-NT-Greek kind either). I have always felt as though I may have missed something material to my understanding of the language.<br><br>From what you seem to be saying, there is very little to be gained from careful study of accents when it comes to understanding the text. Would that be accurate enough a statement?<br><br>Paul F. Evans<br>Pastor<br>Thunder Swamp Pentecostal Holiness Church<br>Mount Olive, NC<br><br>"Endeavouring to make use of NT Greek in a real life ministry!" <br><br>----------<br>From: Carl W. Conrad <<font color="#0000FF"><u>cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu</u><font color="#000000">><br>To: Paul F. Evans <<font color="#0000FF"><u>evans@mail.gld.com</u><font color="#000000">><br>Cc:
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: Sat Apr 20 2002 - 15:38:05 EDT
'<font color="#0000FF"><u>b-greek@virginia.edu</u><font color="#000000">'<br>Subject: Re: accents<br>Date: Tuesday, February 11, 1997 7:01 AM<br><br>At 3:06 PM -0600 2/10/97, Paul F. Evans wrote:<br>>Carl,I would like to demonstrate my usual knack for the<br>>"basic" and elementary question. In the recent discussion<br>>of accents, it has been observed, and I am well aware of<br>>the fact, that accents were not original to the text (NT<br>>in particular). Where do they come from, and by what system<br>>were they put into place? And if they do, in some instances,<br>>make a material difference to meaning, surely where the<br>>meaning is ambiguous in the first place, or a textual variant<br>>disputed, accents cannot be the determiners?<br><br>I have to plead ignorance on this one, but I would readily defer five or<br>six list-members whom I know to be fully competent to offer a quick answer<br>to this one. I do know that later Greek MSS do show accents an
d breathing<br>marks, but my impression is that these were a Byzantine invention, intended<br>to indicate how Greek HAD been pronounced prior to the gradual shift-over<br>to a stress-accent pronunciation that may have been in process already as<br>the shift in pronunciation of 2/3 of the vowels to an (English) long-E<br>sound, "itacism" was completing itself (dare I use he "reflexive voice"<br>here?).<br><br>It would certainly be hard to estimate the full measure debt we users of<br>neatly punctuated, word-separated, fair-font-figured, generally elegant<br>Greek texts of our NT and other ancient Greek literature owe to editors and<br>printers. One must learn a great deal (that I have never learned) in order<br>to be able to make good sense of the important early MSS. I must add that I<br>think Isidoros is quite correct in saying that the printing of accents and<br>breathing-marks is at best a mixed blessing: rough breathings make sense to<br>indicate where we should aspirate a vowel, but
we could just as well leave<br>unaspirated initial vowels unmarked; and unless we serious intend to give<br>Greek words a pitch accent in correspondence with values indicated by<br>theory (and I have come across fewer scholars than can be counted on the<br>fingers of one hand who do), it would be more sensible to mark only the<br>syllable receiving the stress accent, and an acute would be the only accent<br>needed (or whichever other anyone preferred, as it would not be indicating<br>pitch, in any event). That is, I think, the procedure adopted in current<br>modern Greek, and unless it can be shown that spoken Greek of the NT era<br>was still being pronounced with a pitch accent, it would seem reasonable to<br>me to reform the orthography of the Greek NT that way. But even if that<br>should seem wise to some, I frankly don't expect it to happen within my<br>lifetime if it ever does; the U.S. cannot even make the obviously desirable<br>change-over to the metric system, and we know that Law and Religion in<br>
general are the most conservative institutions in human culture.<br><br>It's too early in the morning where I am to be thinking such futile thoughts.<br>Time to lighten up! Anyone for accents?<br><br>Carl W. Conrad<br>Department of Classics, Washington University<br>One Brookings Drive, St. Louis, MO, USA 63130<br>(314) 935-4018<br><font color="#0000FF"><u>cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu</u><font color="#000000"> OR <font color="#0000FF"><u>cwc@oui.com</u><font color="#000000"><br>WWW: <font color="#0000FF"><u>http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/><font color="#000000"><br><br><br>----------<br><br></p>
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