Did you know that αλλα occurs 557 times in the whole of the LXX (nearly four times the size of the NT); compared to 638 times in the NT? That number includes the alternate MSS text in Joshua, Daniel, etc.

And the LXX books with the most frequent instances of αλλα (instances per 1000 words in book) are books likely composed in Greek, stuff like Wisdom of Solomon (3 αλλα/1000 words) and 4 Maccabees (6.3/1000)? Tobit and Judith are also high (both 2/1000), but so are Malachi (~2/1000) and, believe it or not, Job (~3/1000)!

Comparatively, Holmes' second edition Apostolic Fathers Greek text has 352 instances. That's over half of the number of NT instances, but the corpus size is just over 1/3 of the NT.

That'll make a guy think.

Update (2008-03-12): On the idea of whether αλλα can be an indicator of Aramaic in the gospels, or translation Greek; let's not forget that it could just be a diachronic thing. LXX => early, NT => later, AF => even later. Maybe αλλα usage increased over time, particularly since it is a development from αλλος. (It may therefore be useful to compare use of αλλος/αλλα between LXX/NT/AF to get a better picture; I'll leave this for someone else to dig into).

On the Aramaic question, perhaps the place to start would be with Raymond A. Martin's Syntactical Evidence of Semitic Sources in Greek Documents (amazon.com). He thinks that minimal use of certain prepositions may be evidence of a translated text; also και/δε in some contexts, but doesn't say anything about αλλα (from my quick re-skim). Martin presents a lot of evidence, but I don't know that I buy it (call it my "correlation does not prove causation" skepticism).

Anyway, here's the chart of αλλα usage in the NT. I generated this with Logos Bible Software's Graph Bible Search Results feature, which is an option on the right-hand side of all Bible search results menus (Bible Speed Search, which I used for this; Bible Search; and Syntax Search). The numbers on the right of the bars are # of αλλα per 1000 words in a book. So Matthew has 2.0162 αλλα per 1000 words; Mark has 3.9788 per 1000; etc. This sort of distribution leads me to think that use of αλλα is perhaps more stylistic than translational; though the LXX numbers reported (that graph is below the NT graph) are much less frequent. This may say more about the translators and the time they translated in than the translation itself.

And here's the LXX graph:

That's right, it's time for Ella pictures. I haven't been doing my job as proud papa, so today you get three excellent pictures of our little girl. Enjoy!

 
Eating finger foods and gettin' messy!

Jailbird; how Ella usually greets us
in the morning.

Isn't she a cutie?

At least, that was the working title of the abstract I've submitted for the 2008 ETS meeting in Rhode Island this November. But I couldn't bring myself to actually make that the title of the paper. So here's what I've submitted:

We'll see if the abstract is accepted. Either way, I've already started culling through the 638 instances of αλλα in the New Testament (500+ of which appear in a negative pairing, it seems), working through the section on αλλα in Denniston's Greek Particles (amazon.com), reading Heckert on αλλα (amazon.com); I'll probably be braving the lexicon articles (BDAG, LSJ, LouwNida) sometime over the next week; and hitting the grammars (BDF, Moulton-Howard-Turner, Robertson, Porter's Idioms, Moule's Idioms, Wallace; perhaps Young's Intermediate Grammar) as well.

Sounds like fun, huh?

Update (2008-03-11): Responding to some comments: Yes, I do plan on posting the paper, but likely in conjunction with or just after the conference in November. But I'll probably blog some thoughts along the way that may or may not make it into the paper. On other resource (e.g. Thrall); perhaps. There is no shortage of items to look at for background. But the paper isn't a review of how people have described αλλα in the past, so there has to be a limit to the background section of the paper. I just don't know what that is yet (beyond standard lexica and grammars, Denniston, and Heckert)

From What's New in Papyrology, mention of a Web Exhibition at the University of Michigan: Diversity in the Desert.

Check it out!

Two years ago today, I asked Amy to marry me. It was the smartest, wisest and without-a-doubt the best thing I've ever done.

The good Lord saw fit to bring us together; surely I've had the most benefit.

I love you, Amy. More today than yesterday.

This one excerpt all at once shows my love-hate relationship with both the genitive and with Charles Ellicott's commentary on the Pastoral Epistles (amazon.com). Here he discusses επαγγελιαν .. ζωης in 1Ti 4.8:

'promise of life.' The genitival relation is not perfectly clear. If it be the gen. of identity or apposition (comp. Scheuerl. Synt. § 12.1, p. 82), ζωη, the import or rather object of the promise, would seem at first sight to involve two applications, quantitative ('long life,' Eph. 4.3, De W.) when in connexion with της νυν, qualitative ('holy, blessed life') when in connexion with της μελλουσης. If again it be the gen. of reference to (Huth., comp. Alf.), or the point of view (Scheuerl. Synt. § 18. 1, p. 129 sq.), ζωη retains its general meaning ('vital existence,' etc.), but επαγγελια becomes indefinite, and moreover is in a connexion with its dependent genitive not supported by any other passage in the NT. This last objection is so grave that it seems preferable to adopt the first form of gen., but in both members to give ζωη its higher and more definitely scriptural sense, and to regarded it as involving the idea, not of mere length, or of mere material blessings (contrast Mark 10.30, μετα διωγμων), but of spiritual happiness (ευδαιμονια, Coray) and holiness; in a word, as expressing 'the highest blessedness of the creature:' see Trench, Synon. § 27, whose philology however, in connecting ζωη with αω, is here doubtful; it is rather connected with Lat. 'vivere' (Sanscr. jîv); see esp. Pott, Etym. Forsch. Vol 1. p. 265, Donalds. Cratyl. § 112, Benfey, Wurzellex. vol. 1. p. 684. There is a good treatise on ζωη in Olsh. Opusc. p. 187 sq. (Ellicott, 61)

First, on genitives. Does anyone seriously treat genitives like this with regularity? Is anyone consumed with classifying genitives (let alone datives, accusatives and nominatives)? Does one really need to label it in order to think about what it does in the passage; to the point of letting the label determine what the genitive can and cannot do in the phrase in question? I don't. And I can't imagine myself attaining command of the nearly 100 types of genitives that Wallace alone isolates and identifies. Why doesn't one simply just look at what the genitive does in a case without feeling a need to put it in a box?

Second, on Ellicott. Can you see why I love him and hate him, all at the same time? The references are great, the discussion makes you think. But it's tough to read. His conclusion is that " ... it seems preferable to adopt the first form of gen." (what's the 'first form' again?) and then gives it his own little twist. That's the frustrating part—why go to the problem of classifying it if your classification is going to be unique? Why not just discuss the function the thing?? On the plus side, you see all sorts of references (to grammars and syntaxes, to commentators, and to other references); this one doesn't even begin to list classical references like many of his other comments do. But it's a pain to wade through.

Long-time ricoblog readers know that I have a more-than-passing interest in stylometry and stylistic studies, particularly in the realm of authorship attribution.

I'm also reading a lot about the Fathers of the Church (via Drobner). And for the Church Fathers for whom we have much information and transmitted writings, there always seems to be mention of documents that had been attributed to a Father at one point in time that have since been proven/posited to not be from that Father.

So, the question: Does anyone have any references to stylometric studies of particular Greek church fathers?

There has been much ink spilt on the question of authorship attribution of New Testament epistles; but has anyone ever taken those same theories and applied them to the much larger corpora of some of the Greek fathers? My primary contention is that the NT is too small for the sorts of authorship studies folks do (vocabulary? bah, gimme a million word corpus from an author and maybe we can do something). In other words, I'd be interested in reading through if anyone has ever done for Chrysostom what P.N. Harrison did to the Pastorals in his 1922 tome The Problem of the Pastoral Epistles, and what sorts of results they came up with.

Any help?

I've been taking a bit of a holiday. Logos (my employer) has a program for long-term employees that allows one month of a 'sabbatical' for every 10 years worked; this is in addition to any normal vacation/holiday time. They allow us to split it into two two-week portions. I'm taking my second two-week portion.

So I've been spending some time reading and writing, among other things. One book I've been camping in is Drobner's The Fathers of the Church (amazon.com). I have to say that overall, it is awesome.

Why is it awesome? Here are the two biggies, from my perspective:

1. Information but no overload. Drobner surveys the fathers roughly chronologically (I'm in the mid-400's right now). He has enough information about the person, his history, and stance on important issues (homoousia or homoiousia? Nicene? Condemned as heretic?) without getting into too many details. Additionally, there are further sections for most fathers detailing particular writings (e.g., "Exegetical Writings") or particular works if certain works are noteworthy.

2. Bibliographies, Bibliographies, Bibliographies. I can't say enough about the bibliographies. In the "Editions" bibliographies, where appropriate, there are volume/page citations to Migne's Patrologia Graeca, which you can now get to online. In the "Translations" bibliographies, there are series/volume/page citations to Schaff's Early Church Fathers (Ante-Nicene Fathers, Nicene/Post-Nicene Fathers Series 1, Nicene/Post-Nicene Fathers Series 2) all of which are online as well.

What else have I been doing with my time? I've also been reading (in smaller chunks than Drobner) Dooley & Levinson's Analyzing Discourse (amazon.com). I've read through the book before, but much of it bounced off of my frontal lobe and dissipated into the air around me. This time through, parts are actually sticking. This is a short book, intended to be introductory but it still has some lingo problems (seems as if every linguist in the world, even when trying to write in an introductory style, still uses terms and lingo that are unfamiliar to non-linguists). There are interesting concepts in the book, many of which can be applied to reading and analyzing the text of the Bible. It's been good to re-read the material; I'm looking forward to the section on participant reference as that is an area I've been thinking about recently.