Subject: Mk 15:45

From: [email-masked] (alexander mirkovic)
Date: Sat, 13 Jul 1996 01:47:17 -0500 (CDT)

Dear list,

since this is my first post on the tc-list I would like to intruduce my
self. I am a graduate student at Vanderbilt preparing for the qualifying
examination in the area of New Testament and Early Christianity.
        A recent post at b-greek list reminded me of the problem conscerning
the relationship between different local texts and Greek dialects.
        The majority text, several uncials like A, C, W, Peshitto and Coptic
read in Mk 14:45 SWMA. (I guess the Coptic tradition has PSWMA that peculiar
Egyptian pronnunciation of Greek). Syrus Sinaiticus and D have PTWMA AUTOU.
Sinaiticus, Vaticanus, L, Coridethianus read PTWMA.
        What is the linguistic evidence to say that, in Alexandria and
Egypt, the preffered word for a dead body was SWMA, while in Antioch and
Syria it was PTWMA? Would you agree with this statement?

Greetings,

Alexander
********************************************************************
Alexander Mirkovic
Ph.D. student in New Testament and Early Christianity
Senior Teaching Fellow for Koine Greek at Vanderbilt University
1410, 25th Ave. S. #1102-E
Nashville, TN 37212
ph. (615) 421-8331
                                     [email-masked],edu

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From: Vincent Broman <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 17 Jul 96 09:45:09 PDT

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[email-masked] asked:
> Syria it was PTWMA?

The two words are not cognate dialectal variants, like QALATTA and QALASSA,
their etymologies are separate.  Also, their meanings differ, in that
PTWMA is a "fallen", dead body, while SWMA is not a dead body unless
context or attached adjectives make it so.

The information in Bauer makes it look like there are authors that use
both words.  Bauer attributes the variant readings interchanging SWMA/PTWMA
to a scribe's stylistic preference, because SWMA is more "dignified".

The distribution of the witnesses for PTWMA/SWMA cohere geographically
because _text_types_ have some geographical coherence, but without
further evidence it would be hard to infer a dialectal preference.
There are some word pairs like GAMISKW/GAMIZW and APANTHSAI/UPANTHSAI
(if memory hasn't failed me) that do vary consistently according
to text type and which look more like dialectal preferences.
Anyone know other examples?

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