Hatch-Redpath lists six occurrences in the canonical books of the LXX. In one instance (1 Kings 9:17) the word is κατώτερος, while in the other five (Nehemiah 4:13 and four verses in Psalms) it is κατώτατος.
One possible answer that occurs to me might be that in the koine of the eastern Mediterranean the words are, in fact, treated as synonyms, in a departure from Attic Greek, which had retained a clear distinction between them. Is that, in fact, a possibility?
A further complication is an inconsistency in the mention of Christ’s descent into the abode of the dead, the so-called harrowing of hell. In Ephesians 4:9 the phrase is εἰς τὰ κατώτερα μέρη τῆς γῆς (though some MSS omit the noun μέρη). In the Apostles’ Creed, however, we find κατελθόντα εις τα κατώτατα, where the adjective is used absolutely.
The concordances show κατώτερος occurring in the New Testament only in this one verse, though a similar form is seen when Matthew says of Herod that he ἀποστείλας ἀνεῖλεν πάντας τοὺς παῖδας τοὺς ἐν Βηθλέεμ καὶ ἐν πᾶσι τοῖς ὁρίοις αὐτῆς ἀπὸ διετοῦς καὶ κατωτέρω. In this case, I think, only the comparative could be used, not the superlative. Κατώτατος, on the other hand, doesn’t appear in the NT at all.
Links:
https://archive.org/details/HatchRedpat ... 6/mode/2up
https://archive.org/details/greekenglis ... 8/mode/2up
[Edited to add]
Not everyone agrees that Eph 4:9 refers to Christ’s descent into hell. This is what what Paul J. Kobelski says about this verse in the New Jerome Biblical Commentary:
9. lower regions: Either descent into Hades, the abode of the dead (cf. Rom 10:7; Phil 2:10; 1 Pet 3:19; 4:6), or incarnation on earth is meant by the “lower regions.” The author’s cosmology, in which all nonhuman beings, beneficent and malevolent, are located in the heights (1:20-22; 3:9-10; 6:10-20) supports interpreting tés gés, “the earth,” as an appositional gen. (“the lower regions,” i.e., “the earth” (for a different opinion, see BDF 167) and the descent as the incarnation. The lower regions, ta katétera, are contrasted to the heavenly heights, ta epourania.
Statistics: Posted by BrianB — Mon Jul 01, 2024 7:32 pm