Greek ἁπλοῦς & MT-LXX merge search

[Julia Falling]

Hey –

 

In this morning's sermon (streamed live), our pastor pointed out that ἁπλοῦς could be translated single also (meaning in context, I think, focused on one thing?  Or healthy, sound, clear).  Anyway, after the service, I did some digging a found that ἁπλοῦς is used only 2x in the NT: Mt 6:22 and it's parallel, Lk 11:34. 

 

Out of curiousity, I checked its use in the LXX – there was only one: Pr 11:25.  I tried to determine from which Hebrew word ἁπλοῦς had been translated.  The cross-highlighting indicated the pual participle of דָּשֵׁן.  To double check, I ran a search for דָּשֵׁן in the MT – there were no occurrences in Pr 11:25.  I then searched for בְּרָכָה, which does occur in Pr 11:25.  Given this result, I did a merge of the two searches using the MT-LXX and it yielded ἁπλοῦς as translating בְּרָכָה.  

 

Something is obviously wrong. Both results cannot be right.  Looking at the English translations of the LXX (Brenton, NETS, & SAAS), it seems to make more sense that ἁπλοῦς translates דָּשֵׁן and εὐλογουμένη translates בְּרָכָה.  That makes sense of the English translations of the LXX.

 

Any ideas?  This is a curiosity, not a doctrinal crisis.  We do have an error somewhere, or perhaps just a difference of opinion?

 

Thanks.  I'm interested in your theories.

[JonathanHuber]

If you just look at the MT/LXX parallel, it's pretty clear that ἁπλῆ is "translating" תְדֻשָּׁן. 

 

I'd guess something just went wrong with your search (entered wrong lexeme?) since that search pulls up Prov 11.25 on my end. Are you sure you're reading the merge correctly? Prov 11.25 shows as a hit for both words, but they're not parallel to each other. 

 

Edit: in the screenshot here, you can see that both words from Julie's merged search appear as hits in the verse but do not correspond to each other. (Pardon the errant annotation obscuring the merge.  )

Edited March 22, 2020 by JonathanHuber

[Ken Simpson]

Hi Julia, in the actual MT-LXX database, ἁπλοῦς corresponds to תדשׁן which makes prefect sense to me.

 

I haven't had a try at a MERGE search yet, but will do. Remember you can just look directly in the MT-LXX module and see what Dr Tov has indicated. (painful for multiple hits, but fine in this case.

 

I'll keep you posted. How about you upload a screen shot of your merge search?

 

Make sure you stay 2m from your computer - I don't want it to get a virus....

Hi Julia, in the actual MT-LXX database, ἁπλοῦς corresponds to תדשׁן which makes prefect sense to me.

 

I haven't had a try at a MERGE search yet, but will do. Remember you can just look directly in the MT-LXX module and see what Dr Tov has indicated. (painful for multiple hits, but fine in this case.

 

I'll keep you posted. How about you upload a screen shot of your merge search?

 

Make sure you stay 2m from your computer - I don't want it to get a virus....

Jonathan got in just before me!

[Ken Simpson]

My MERGE search just found the one,

 

 

I'd love to see this...

 I did a merge of the two searches using the MT-LXX and it yielded ἁπλοῦς as translating בְּרָכָה.  

[Mark Allison]

Actually, you need to merge both the LXX and MT to see which Greek word is being translated by a specific Hebrew word. In your example Ken, it's only demonstrating that בְּרָכָה appears in Prov. 11:25. 

 

[Julia Falling]

Here's my search –

 

[Julia Falling]

Here's a second shot with Pr 11:25 at the top –

 

[Mark Allison]

Julia, make sure you're searching by Article. In the MT-LXX, every line is an article. That will force the display to align properly.

Edited March 22, 2020 by Mark Allison

[Julia Falling]

Here's the correct search – it had to be a literal search.

 

[Julia Falling]

Got it.  Thanks, guys.  I'm less confused now.  If I do this again, not long from now, I have a good chance of remembering.  Maybe I should do an MT-LXX search every Sunday afternoon?  Thank you very much!

 

EDIT:  This means the cross-highlighting between the LXX & MT matches the search, as would be expected, since the cross highlighting is based on the LXX-MT database, right?

Edited March 23, 2020 by Julia Falling

[Ken Simpson]

Actually, you need to merge both the LXX and MT to see which Greek word is being translated by a specific Hebrew word. In your example Ken, it's only demonstrating that בְּרָכָה appears in Prov. 11:25. 

 

 

Hey Mark, thanks for that. But I don't think you understood what I was doing.

The LXX search was for ἁπλοῦς. That only gave the one result (but it could have given multiple results for a different lexeme).

The MERGE command then took all the inflected results of the LXX lexeme search and searched the greek field of the MT-LXX database irrespective of which Hebrew word was related to it. That way we could see whatever other Hebrew words Tov may have used ἁπλοῦς to translate (in this case with only one result it didn't matter anyway really).

You are right if I was trying to find where ἁπλοῦς and תדשׁן are related by Tov, but that wasn't what I was trying to do (and I don't think it was what Julia was trying to do, but I may be wrong).

[Ken Simpson]

Hi Julia, MERGE seems complex but is actually not that complex once you get the basic idea of what's going on. (It has helped me remember how to use it even though I don't use it often).

 

A search for (for example) a lexeme produces a list of inflected results (that you can view if you do a WORD ANALYSIS and drag the INFLECT item into the Set Text Display column)

 

When you place MERGE in the search field of another resource it takes all of those INFLECTED results and searches for them in the larget resource (this has to happen in MT-LXX because all of the words are only inflected forms which are not tagged).

So then you will find every place where one of the inflected forms of that lexeme that is found in the Tov database.

You can complexify that by using a second resource and then showing where xxx lexeme (say in LXX) is translated by yyy lexeme (say in Heb) but by and large that is an unneeded extra step unless your are really doing specific lexeme co-ordination studies. Which I did in my dissertation. Mostly the first one will work - eg. what Hebrew words are translated by the LXX as agaph? or similar.

It's a very useful command.

[Joel Brown]

1) Julia, yes, the cross highlighting uses the MT-LXX database, so you should in theory get the same results as a search.

2) Don't forget that you can also accomplish this as a simple TEXT search:

 

 

Frankly, though, since ἁπλοῦς only exists once in the LXX, running searches for it and its Hebrew equivalent are a bit redundant.

[Julia Falling]

Thanks for the all the input.  I always learned a lot when I air my confusion on the forums.  I hope someone besides me benefited.

[Brian K. Mitchell]

  I hope someone besides me benefited.

I have been following this thread with great interested and I have learned a few new (to me) skills. Thank you for asking your question and starting this informative thread! Your search may have been redundant but your use of Accordance is something to check out what people say or claim for yourself I find highly commendable.