From: Randall Buth (ButhFam@compuserve.com)
Date: Sat Feb 02 2002 - 19:58:29 EST
TOIS PASI
CAIREIN
For the b-greek list:
Meet First Century Greek, Egypt
The following is a letter, dated with the Roman equivalent to 100 CE,
from a father, Lucius Bellenus Gemellus, to his son, Sabinus.
Lucius knew a proper Greek letter style though his
spelling left much to be desired. He was a discharged army veteran who
owned several pieces of land in the Egyptian delta.
The letter is available in the Loeb series, Select Papyri, letter # 109.
The letter will be copied below as originally written.
Lines will be numbered and broken into sense-units, with an overly
literal word-for-word gloss will be given, and finally a brief language
commentary.
1 LOUKIOS BELLHNOS GEMELLOS
lucius bellenus gemellus
2 SABINWI TWI OIEIWI
to sabinus the son,
3 CAIREIN
to-be-happy. (=greetings)
4 EU OUN PUHSAS
well, therefore, having-done,
5 KOMISAMENOS MOU THN EPISTOLHN
having-received of-me the letter,
6 PEMSIS MU PINDARON EIS THN POLIN
you-will-send to-me pindar to the city,
7 TON PEDIOFULAKA THS DIONUSIADO(S)
the fieldguard of dionysias;
8 EPI ERWTHSE ME ERMONAX
since ermonax asked me
9 EINA AUTON LABH EIS KERKESOUCA
in-order-that him he-might-take to kerkesoucha
10 KATAMAQIN TON ELAIWNA AUTOU
to checkout the olive-groove of him,
11 EPI PUKNOS ESTIN
since numerous it-is
12 KAI QELI EX AUTON
and he-wishes from-among them
13 EKKOYAI FUTA
to-cut-out plants
14 EINA ENPIROS KOPH
so-that skillfully he-might-cut
15 TA MELLONTA EKKOPTESQAI
the-things soon-coming to-be-cut
16 KAI THN EIKQUIN PEMSIS
and the fish you-will-send
17 THI KD EI KE EIS TA GENESIA GEMELLHS
on-the 24 or 25 for the birthday-things of-Gemella
18 MH ON LHRHSHS TON EKTINAGMON SOU
not, then, you-should-silly-talk the shaking-out of-you
(=don't make excuses about your own olive-harvest)
19 ERRWSO
be-well
20 D AUTOKRATOROS kAISAROS NEROUA
TRAIAN- SEBASTOU GERMANIKOU
year-4-of emperor kaisar nerva trajanus
augustus germanicus
21 CUAK IH
month-choiak day-18
Commentary
These notes will help a student make their way through a first
acquaintance of such letters.
2 OIEIWI (=hUIWi) shows the Koine sounds OI=U, EI=I
The final -I was a grammatical, unpronounced 'adscript' marking
the 'dative'.
4 EU OUN PUHSAS ... PEMSIS.
Notice the spelling of POIHSAS and PEMYEIS
Notice the "participial" Greek style. English would have said "I want
you to do me a favor ... and send ..." or perhaps, "It would be
good, ... if you send ..." This is the Greek way of making the most
important material the most thematic structure. "Send" uses a finite
verb and is the main point. "having done well" is a polite introduction
and 'demoted' to a participle.
This is a common Greek communication strategy to use participles
to 'demote' the lesser thematic material in comparison to the finite
verb.
6 PEMSIS MU in place of PEMYEIS MOI
Notice the U for OI . The use of MS for MY is
irrelevant to the phonemic system of Koine Greek, but does reflect
the perception of the writer.
8 EPI ERWTHSE ME
the conjunction is EPEI, which is spelled here by sound rather
than grammar. Another sound spelling is ERMONAX
in place of ERMWNAX .
9 EINA AUTON LABH
Spelling EINA for the common INA should catch a student's
attention. Of course, after just reading the lines above, 2, 6, 8, these
changes between EI and I might already seem "normal".
Also, note the lack of iota adscript for the subjunctive
ending on the verb which shows that LABH was pronounced
without an extra IOTA at the end.
10 KATAMAQIN is being used instead of KATAMAQEIN. Once again
an interchange involving EI and I.
11 EPI again in place of EPEI 'since'
12 KAI QELI EX AUTON
Students should not be surprised to find QELI 'he wants' in
place of QELEI 'he wants. Likewise, EX AUTON (genitive) means
that the word is EX AUTWN in standard orthography.
14 EINA ENPIROS KOPH
EINA for INA, and the lack of IOTA adscript for the subjunctive
KOPHi have already been commented on in line 9.
ENPIROS has three spelling errors in one word! The standard form
would be EMPEIRWS 'skillfully' 'with experience'. the vowels are
readily understandable as reflecting Koine Greek pronunciation.
The -n- is an additional phenomenon for this epistle. It is a
'morphological' spelling according to the root word rather than the
sound. Such a 'grammatical' spelling may be added to the
grammatical 'dative' spelling of TWI OIEIWI in line 2.
16 KAI THN EIKQUIN PEMSIS
PEMSIS for PEMSEIS was discussed in line 6.
Of more interest is EIKQUIN for ICQUN. The first interchange
of EI and I may be noted as a regular phenomenon. The
addition of I in -QUIN may be thought of as a helping sound between
the front vowel and the alveolar nasal. another idiosyncrasy is
-K- in place of -C- before the Q. The author evidently only heard or
felt one aspiration with the consonant cluster and saw no need to
write two aspirated stops back to back.
17 THI KD EI KE
This is of some significance. "In the 24 or 25". the Greek word for
"or" is H. Here the word is spelled with EI. Does this mean that EI
was used for both the sound [i] and the sound [e] by this writer?
Probably not. This writer probably included a dialectical word in
his Greek, where EI (that is [i]) meant "or". For this writer the Greek
words for "if" EI and "or" EI were homonyms. Alternatively, this may
be evidence where H has already become [i] in sound. I do not
consider this likely for this writer, however, because his other HTA
letters are correctly writen. See line 18. Our writer apparently used
the H symbol correctly and distinctly from EI and I. This spelling of
the word for "or" as EI is not unique to this letter and may be thought
of as a kind of Egyptian Greek slang.
18 MH ON LHRHSHS TON EKTINAGMON SOU
First, the spelling ON for OUN 'therefore' is best explained as a
typo, since OUN is correctly spelled in line 4.
Of more interest is the fact that the main, dominant point in each
structural paragraph is introduced by OUN, lines 4 and 18.
Such an "oun" style reminds one of the Gospel of John.
See Randall Buth,
"OUN, DE, KAI and Asyndeton in John's Gospel," in _Linguistics and
New Testament Interpretation, Essays on Discourse Analysis_, David
Black, ed. Broadman, 1992:144-161.
All in all, this is a very entertaining and instructive letter for students
of NT Greek. There are literally thousands and tens of thousands of
additional documents from Egypt, Israel, Rome, Athens, Asia Minor,
K.T.L.
After providing the above letter and commentary, you may permit
a comment on the obvious. It is transparently easy to read the
above letter when using the pronunciation sysem in Living Koine
Greek for Everyone. One of the purposes of that system is to
allow direct, seemless access with the living language of the
first century. After comparison with material from all over the
Mediterranean, one may assume that the writer of this letter would
have understood Luke and Paul and would have been able to
freely converse with them. This is the kind of person that would
be in a potential audience for the NT writers.
In any case, this is a tip of an iceberg as to why
"it is beyond reasonable doubt that EI was pronounced the same
as I, and I was pronounced the same as EI".
Hopefully, the value of 'discourse grammar ' perspectives was
also visible in comments on thematicity with participles and finite
verbs, and with relator words like OUN.
ERRWSQE
Randall Buth, PhD
Director, Biblical Hebrew Ulpan
www.BiblicalUlpan.org
Buth@jerusalemschool.org
and Lecturer,
Rothberg International School
Hebrew University
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