Monday, May 27, 2019

Apocope in the New Testament--2 Corinthians 12:7?

Merriam-Webster definition for "apocope": the loss of one or more sounds or letters at the end of a word (as in sing from Old English singan)

Another example of apocope is "photo" for photograph.

I've wondered if apocope occurs in the Bible. Are there examples of this linguistic phenomenon?


Johann Bengel invokes 2 Corinthians 12:7 as an example:

The word σατᾶν only occurs in the LXX. twice or thrice, and that too as indeclinable; but σατανᾶς is declined in thirty-four places in the New Testament, and among these, nine times by Paul; and in this single passage it is used as an indeclinable noun, by a well-weighed apocope [the loss of a syllable at the end], certainly not without good reason. ἄγγελος σατᾶν then does not seem in this passage to be in apposition, as if it were said the angel Satan for the devil, for the devil is nowhere called an angel, but he himself has his angels. Therefore Satan is either a proper name in the genitive or an adjective in the nominative, so that there is denoted either an angel sent by Satan or a very destructive angel, an angel like Satan himself or the devil, as distinguished from the fact of his being sent by Satan.



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