From: Frank W. Hughes (fwhughes@sunbeach.net)
Date: Mon Jun 05 2000 - 15:13:49 EDT
I was taught by the late David Wilmot that in Attic Greek the real
accent was tone, not stress. In the Hellenistic-Roman period, accents
shifted over from a tone accent to a stress accent; and when this
happened, the vowel structure began to collapse. Thus in the period of
the NT there was little if any distinction in pronunciation between EI
and I and H and the same was true of O and W. In other words the
shorter vowels lengthened to have much the same values as the long
vowels.
This, by the way, is what helps me choose ECHOMEN over ECHWMEN in Romans
5:1 even the attestation of ECHWMEN is rather better. I also believe
that ECHOMEN (we have) fits the context much, much better than ECHWMEN
(let us have).
Frank W. Hughes
Codrington College
Barbados
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