Wed Jan 31 21:05:45 1996

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Date: Wed, 31 Jan 1996 21:03:08 -0500 (EST)
From: Maurice Robinson 
To: tc-list@scholar.cc.emory.edu
Cc: tc-list@scholar.cc.emory.edu, John Wevers 
Subject: Re: Future subjunctive
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On Wed, 31 Jan 1996, John Wevers wrote:

> 	Possibly a Septuagint scholar might join the discussion.
> The last thirty years of my scholarly career has been devoted
> largely to dealing with mss readings. Copyists simply did not
> distinguish between the homonymic -omai and wmai. In other
> words aorist subjunctives could be spelled with -o- or with -w-
> almost indiscriminately. I would strongly suggest that one 
> abandon the notion of a future subjunctive. Grammatically
> that makes no sense, and the reading that has been
> identified as a future subjunctive is nothing of the kind,
> but is simply a misspelled indicative. As far as I know future
> subjunctives are not attested as anything but the result of
> homonymic spelling. JWW

While agreeing that the identification of the -SWMAI form should not be 
taken as a unique (and unprecedented) future subjunctive, and also that 
there was often among MSS a homonymic interchange between W and O, on 
text-critical grounds I would still maintain that a grammatically 
problematic or "erroneous" reading would not be long perpetuated in any 
given texttype tradition were it not stemming from the autograph.

On the -W- or -O- matter, we have a similar texttype-specific variant at 
Rom.5:1 (ECWMEN/ECOMEN), but the delineation lines occur primarily due to 
texttype, and not merely due to homonymic confusion.  I would suggest 
that in any case, the scribes for the most part knew full well what they 
were doing in allowing the -SWMAI to remain in the text, even if they 
could not all comprehend it grammatically.

The real issue on 1Cor13:3, however, is not the -SWMAI/-SOMAI interchange 
(where no one seems to be claiming the "more correct" -SOMAI is to be 
considered original), but with the greater issue of "burning" vs. 
"boasting" (the -Q- vs the -X-).

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