Statistics: Posted by mwh — Thu May 16, 2024 5:54 pm
Koine and Biblical and Medieval Greek • Re: ἢ in LXX Psalm 1:4
I see we have ἀλλ' ἢ not only in 4 but already in 2, and it’s well attested in the Septuagint. It’s an oddity—seemingly no different from simple ἀλλά in sense, though it’s sometimes said to be “stronger.” I think there may well have been some sort of crosscontamination with ἄλλο ἤ, used after negatives in ordinary Greek (and in Aristophanes there can be uncertainty as to whether αλλ’ ἤ represents ἀλλὰ ἤ or ἄλλο ἤ), but that’s not a fully satisfactory explanation, since it doesn’t apply across the board and it doesn’t account for the uneven distribution.