The Phrases in the New Testament

Abstract

Such metaphorical expressions as υióς εlρήvής (Luke x. 6) and (John xvii. 12) are usually explained by commentators as Hebraisms or translation-Greek, despite the caution given by A. Deissmann (Bible Studies, trans. Alexander Grieve, 2nd ed., Edinburgh, 1909, pp. 161–6) and MoultonMilligan (The Vocabulary of the Greek Testament, London, 1952, p. 649), who suggested that the N.T. examples could readily be accounted for on ‘the theory of analogical formations’. In support they cite from the inscriptions such examples as υióς πóλεως, υiòς toū ńμoυ Deissmann also stated that his attention had been called ‘to the in the Tragedians, and filius fortunae in Horace’, p. 166. He does not cite the passages, but the Hecuba of Euripides contains an analogous expression. Hecuba cries out to Polyxena: , ‘O daughter of an untimely and lamentable fate’, 425. The correctness of Deissmann's observation is now further vindicated by Papyrus Bodmer IV (Bodmeriana Bibliotheca, 1958), which contains an almost complete text of Menander's Dyscolos. In this play a slave Pyrrhias had been sent by Sostratus to beg the hand of Cnemon's daughter. Pyrrhias receives a rather rough welcome and returns to his master shouting: ‘He is a madman, one possessed, a lunati’, 88, 89.

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