One of the reasons why I like Robertson’s big grammar is stuff like this:

(f) THE QUESTION OF Αὑτοῦ.  This is somewhat knotty. It seems clear that as a rule αὐτοῦ and not αὑτοῦ is to be printed in the N. T. A number of reasons converge on this point. The older Greek often used αὑτοῦ rather than ἑαυτοῦ as shown by the aspiration of the prepositions like ἀφʼ αὑτοῦ, etc. In the N. T. there is not a single case of such aspiration after elision save in a few single MSS. Add to this the fact that the N. T. uses the reflexive pronoun much less than the earlier Greek, “with unusual parsimony” (Hort). Besides the personal pronouns of the first and second persons are frequently employed (Buttmann) where the reflexive might have been used. Buttmann urges also the point that in the N. T. we always have σεαυτοῦ, not σαυτοῦ. The earliest uncial MSS. of the N. T. and the LXX that use the diacritical marks belong to the eighth century, but they all have αὐτοῦ, not αὑτοῦ. Even in the early times it was largely a matter of individual taste as to whether the personal or the reflexive pronoun was used. Blass (p. 35) indeed decides absolutely against αὑτοῦ. But the matter is not quite so easy, for the κοινή inscriptions give examples of ὑφʼ αὑτοῦ in first century B.C. and A.D. Mayser also gives a number of papyri examples like καθʼ αὑτοῦ, μεθʼ αὑτοῦ, ὑφʼ αὑτῶν, where the matter is beyond dispute. Hort agrees with Winer in thinking that sometimes αὑτοῦ must be read unless one insists on undue harshness in the Greek idiom. He instances Jo. 2:24, αὐτὸς δὲ Ἰησοῦς οὐκ ἐπίστευσεν αὑτὸν αὐτοῖς, and Lu. 23:12, προϋπῆρχον γὰρ ἐν ἔχθρᾳ ὄντες πρὸς αὑτούς. There are other examples where a different meaning will result from the smooth and the rough breathing as in 1 Jo. 5:10 (αὑτῷ), 18 (αὐτόν, αὐτοῦ), Eph. 1:5 (αὐτόν), 10 (αὐτῷ), Col. 1:20 (αὐτόν), 2:15 (αὐτῷ). W. H. print αὑτοῦ about twenty times. Winer leaves the matter “to the cautious judgment of the editors.”
A.T. Robertson, A Grammar of the Greek New Testament in the Light of Historical Research ( (Logos, 1919; 2006)), 226.

BDF was not clear at all when discussing this (§31(1), according to the index).

Have you ever stopped to notice how Cornelius was introduced in Acts 10?

First, Acts 10.1-2 (the translation is a draft from the Lexham English Bible, which is almost complete now):

Now there was a certain man in Caesarea named Cornelius, a centurion of what was called the Italian Cohort, devout and fearing God together with all his household, doing many charitable deeds for the people and praying to God continually. (Ac 10.1-2, LEB draft)

What do we know about Cornelius after these verses?

• Lives in Caesarea
• A centurion
• with the “Italian Cohort”
• Devout and God-fearing (was he a “God-fearer”?)
• His “household” feared God too (interpret that as you will)
• He did many “charitable deeds” for the people
• He prayed to God “continually”

That’s a lot to introduce someone into the discourse. He must be important to the story. For comparison, look at what we know about “Simon the tanner”, whose house Peter was staying at (cf. 9.42; 10.6) — not even enough to know if “tanner” described his trade, or if it was just a surname (e.g. “Simon Berseus”).

That’s not all. When does Cornie come into the story next? See Ac 10.22 for his next introduction/resumption:

And they said, “Cornelius, a centurion, a righteous and God-fearing man—and well spoken of by the whole nation of the Jews—was directed by a holy angel to summon you to his house and to hear words from you.” (Ac 10.22 LEB draft)

Again, what is known/reiterated about Cornelius?

• A Centurion
• A “righteous and God-fearing man”
• Well spoken of by “the whole nation of the Jews”
• Received directions from an angel to summon Peter

Must be pretty important to have all this info about this dude. I don’t think it was an accident that the event where Peter was summoned by Cornelius (a non-Jew, a centurion, for that matter, but one who was a God-fearer and who was accepted by Jews) in this episode where Peter’s conclusion (Ac 10.34-35) is:

So Peter opened his mouth and said, “In truth I understand that God is not one who shows partiality, but in every nation the one who fears him and who does what is right is acceptable to him. (Ac 10.34-35 LEB draft)

This episode ends with the Holy Spirit being poured out on the Gentiles, Ac 10.44-48:

While Peter was still speaking these words, the Holy Spirit fell on all those who were listening to the message. And those believers from the circumcision who had accompanied Peter were astonished that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles, for they heard them speaking in tongues and glorifying God. Then Peter said, “Surely no one can withhold the water for these people to be baptized, who have received the Holy Spirit as we also did!” So he ordered that they be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. Then they asked him to stay for several days. (Ac 10.44-48, LEB draft)

Who was Cornelius? Seems he was pretty important. I guess that’s why he was super-qualified in his introduction (vv. 1-2) and reintroduction (v. 22).

Stephen Levinsohn is a linguist with SIL, and it is well worth the effort (sometimes significant) to understand his cross-linguistic approach to discourse. I cannot say that I fully understand it, but I am lucky in that Steve Runge is a friend of mine and has an office right next to mine at Logos.

Anyway, Steve Runge blogs that Stephen H. Levinsohn’s self-instruction materials for narrative and non-narrative discourse are now online.

These materials include “a passage-by-passage and verse-by-verse exposition of discourse features” for 1 Thessalonians, 1 Timothy, 1 Corinthians 1-4 and Luke 22 and Luke 6:20-49. I’ve worked through portions of the First Timothy notes in the past and can commend it to you. You’ll need both the narrative and non-narrative self-instruction materials as he references them heavily.

Note that Levinsohn’s focus is in providing materials for translators to use to understand and translate the text; he isn’t necessarily providing exegesis for you to consume, he’s helping translators think about and understand the discourse structure of the text. I’ll end with Steve Runge’s caveat:

One note of caution. Stephen is a very precise scholar. Generally speaking, if he cannot account for 95-100% of the data of a given feature, then he does not feel that he has not properly described it. I am [Steve Runge is] aiming for the 80-90% range, since there seems to be a fairly high fatality rate in covering the last 10%. In other words, it becomes so technical in the final leg that many give up the ghost rather than pushing ahead. It’s not really a death march, it just feels like it. My introductions are intended to acclimatize folks before they move off to attempt the summit. When I was doing my doctoral studies there was no concise introduction to the field, most works assumed a horrific amount of background. Hopefully I am bridging that gap.

I commend Levinsohn’s work to you, particularly the self-teaching materials. By all means read and see how languages tend to operate, what principles they follow. It will greatly enhance your ability to think productively about English, Greek, or most any other thing.

It’s funny when you notice things that scribes noticed as well.

I was reading through Acts and came across Acts 9.23-25:

23 When many days had passed, the Jews plotted to kill him, 24 but their plot became known to Saul. They were watching the gates day and night in order to kill him, 25 but his disciples took him by night and let him down through an opening in the wall, lowering him in a basket.  (Acts 9:23–25, ESV)

I thought, “huh. Didn’t realize Saul had disciples.” Here’s the Greek of v. 25:

25 λαβόντες δὲ οἱ μαθηταὶ αὐτοῦ νυκτὸς διὰ τοῦ τείχους καθῆκαν αὐτὸν χαλάσαντες ἐν σπυρίδι. (Ac 9.25, NA27)

Then I looked at the NA27 apparatus to see if there were variants here. Other people have thought the same thing I did, and figured they needed to fix it.

Some MSS simply remove αὐτοῦ thus removing the issue with “his” (“and the disciples took him by night”). Others change οἱ μαθηταὶ αὐτοῦ to αυτον οἱ μαθηταὶ, thus making explicit the formerly implicit object “him” in “took him by night” and removing the “his” from “his disciples”). Note that the text behind the KJV follows this latter option: “Then the disciples took him by night”.

Ain’t this fun?

It’s up, and it is excellent. Check out Doug Chaplin’s blog Clayboy for the details. Thanks for putting it together, Doug, and thanks for the links (to some Logos4 posts [here and here] , a post on the NIV, and a link to my new Didache translation).

In other news, in “The Biblioblog Top 50” for November 2009, ricoblog zooms up the charts from 128 to squeak just inside the top 50 at 43. That’s 85 spots. I guess I got some traffic from that Logos4 post. I’m sure I’ll be out of the top 50 next month.

One of the coolest, sweetest, daggumest features of Logos 4 is presently in beta. It is a search result view called “datasheet” that allows you to sort/filter search results with all known data about a word.

An example: Working through the text of John, I recently noticed his affinity for qualifying an item/idea as “mine” or “yours” using an article with the possessive pronoun. Jn 18.36 is probably the easiest example:

36 ἀπεκρίθη Ἰησοῦς· ἡ βασιλεία ἡ ἐμὴ οὐκ ἔστιν ἐκ τοῦ κόσμου τούτου· εἰ ἐκ τοῦ κόσμου τούτου ἦν ἡ βασιλεία ἡ ἐμή, οἱ ὑπηρέται οἱ ἐμοὶ ἠγωνίζοντο [ἂν] ἵνα μὴ παραδοθῶ τοῖς Ἰουδαίοις· νῦν δὲ ἡ βασιλεία ἡ ἐμὴ οὐκ ἔστιν ἐντεῦθεν. (Jn 18.36, NA27, bold added)

So, I ran a syntax search to find these. Cool. But I wanted to get a better picture of the data and play with it. So I ran a morph search (syntax search results are not supported *yet* in datasheet view, but I hear that’s on the development schedule) for “@D BEFORE 1 word @RS” limited to John (article directly before a possessive pronoun). Datasheet view of the results gives me an Excel-like grid that I can manipulate/sort to my hearts content. With data for each word like previous/next context, lemma, morphological categories, louw-nida info … you get the idea (try it with a reverse interlinear some time).

Click on that thumbnail. Have fun. Here I have a hierarchical sort of the results going by lemma, then by part of speech, then by case of the item. The grouping is then sorted by previous context so I can get an idea of what is being modified by the article/pronoun phrase.

This is serious coolness.

While at SBL in New Orleans this year, my friend Bobby Koduvalil at Hendrickson handed me a new book by Michael Bird (who blogs at Euangelion) called Crossing Over Sea and Land: Jewish Missionary Activity in the Second Temple Period (amazon.com). Bobby said he thought it would be right up my alley.

Bobby was right. I’ve not read the whole book yet, but when I wasn’t snoozing on the plane(s) on the way home, I was engrossed in Bird’s work. There were times where it seemed like I’d only read three pages, but when I looked at the page number, I’d really read about eight pages. This happened more than once, and it’s the sign of a well-written book.

The book is just over 200 pages, with index, but don’t let that fool you. It’s worth reading if you’re at all interested in the subject, or in tangential subjects such as (as I am). Bird works over the available sources (primary and secondary) with economy and precision. No long, drawn-out, yawn-inducing diatribes.

Hope to blog about it at least once more when I make it through the main text of the book. But even now, I’d say it’s worth your time to read.

Advent is swiftly coming upon us. Earlier this fall, I spent some time to write a short daily devotional for use during the advent season.

It is organized by the readings of the Revised Common Lectionary (Year C). Each week’s readings are broken into daily portions, and each day has a short series of questions along with short answers.

My purpose for doing this was to have something for my family to start to read through as a family devotional during the advent season. The questions and answers are hopefully appropriate for such a setting. In reality, the questions (and moreso the answers) are just guidelines — training wheels, if you’d like to think of them that way — the hope is just to stimulate some sort of advent-centered discussion around the day/week readings.

My church (Grace Church Bellingham) is actually publishing copies of this via Lulu.com for families who would like to use it during the advent season. So if you attend you’ll be able to get a copy soon (hopefully before advent starts!)

Otherwise, for everyone else — or if you just wanted a preview — I wanted to post it on the blog. I’d love to have any feedback, good or bad. Just remember it isn’t written as a theological tome, but rather to provoke reflection during the season of advent, where we anticipate the return of our Savior!

Here it is: Advent Devotional