FrankForum (Frankness IS Forum)

I reparsed chapter 24 by clause this time, some of my clauses are smaller than the ones you had, but so far, Im getting the same counts as you. I'll have to continue tomorrow.

I agree that himatyon works as three syllables. I don't think it works in all cases, but you have to say the word quickly to see how the "iota's" come out. From my experience, an 'I' coming after a rolled 'R' or an 'L' will likely produce its own syllable.

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HEB 4:12
The word of God is alive and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of the soul and the spirit, of the joints and marrow, and is a critic of the thoughts and intents of the heart.

Right, the r and l are liquid, just like in Hebrew, so vowels naturally congregate. BTW, there's a huge counting error in Chapter 25, I'm fixing it now, and the fix is astonishing. NO GROUP GROWTH until Thieme started teaching (wouldn't have only been him, Matt25:10-11 if the counts are right) -- for 273 years. Just know the meantime, that all of Chapter 25 is being redone.

And kurie is two syllables, so too numphios. Will revisit Chapter 24 after I see how 25 turns out.

I redid the doc, made corrections but left 24 mostly alone (minor fixes). It now balances with your 147 to Luke 21's singling it out at the end as 70+77, but the total ending is 3150+77 (63+14). 63 is carryover from 'old' pre-Church 1050. I didn't change the doc name, but only the new version is in the same link: viewtopic.php?f=16&t=512&p=2219#p2219

Wow. Ok, I'll have to take a closer look at your parsing of Matt 25 this weekend.

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HEB 4:12
The word of God is alive and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of the soul and the spirit, of the joints and marrow, and is a critic of the thoughts and intents of the heart.

Well, I don't know if you should look at it, but you can EDIT what I did to your own liking with less effort. Right now, I'm just trying to find how Matthew is crafting the two chapters. Now, thanks again to you, I'm sure they are meant to run together. But is Matthew treating the i's Jewish-style like he did in his own Chapter 1, as yods? And what TOTAL is used? It should be at least 3150+63, as Luke apes that style, must have gotten it from Matthew. Formula for the total, is years to Mill plus x number of 1050s. Plus some remainder to show that it's not 'over', necessarily, even then.

For just as you said, it's a Church Mortality Table (likelihood of Rapture due to apostasy). So the remainder helps one remember that this isn't a PROMISE of Time as in Israel's covenant, but yet uses the 7000 idea to convey the future of Apostate Church.

I need look at it to try an alternate parsing for Matt 25. Because, you treat kurios (and its variant forms) as 3 syllables in Matt 24, but then as 2 syllables in Matt 25. I firmly believe that kurios is three solid syllables. That would be the case in any language that uses a rolled 'r'. Or maybe I'm wrong. But if I'm right, then there might be sub-sevening in some very interesting places.

I won't have time to do it tonight though.

Edit:

WHAT IF...syllable 1993 is really 1995? Since you treat kurios as 3 syllables in matt 24, you have to do the same for matt 25. The rolled 'r' excites the 'I', making it its own syllable. Then, if you treat δύο as one syllable (pronounced Hebraically: dthwo).

it would give verse 15 a nice symmetrical rhythm.

καὶ ᾧ μὲν ἔδωκεν πέντε τάλαντα, ᾧ δὲ δύο, ᾧ δὲ ἕν.

It would change the sevening, but I need to see how far it can go.

EDIT!

Then in verse 15 ἰδίαν (pronounced idthyan)...puts it right back on track on 2100.


AND!!! the rest of verse 15 has the same rhythm.

καὶ ᾧ μὲν ἔδωκεν πέντε τάλαντα, ᾧ δὲ δύο, ᾧ δὲ ἕν.


ἑκάστῳ κατὰ τὴν ἰδίαν δύναμιν, καὶ ἀπεδήμησεν.

Ok. I need to sleep now. I have a very long day of work ahead of me, and I don't know how Im going to keep my mind off the meter long enough to sleep.

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HEB 4:12
The word of God is alive and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of the soul and the spirit, of the joints and marrow, and is a critic of the thoughts and intents of the heart.

Thank you. I didn't mean to treat kurios as three syllables, missed reparsing those. The liquid r REPLACES the 'i', which is why two syllables. So kur-yos not kur-i-os, IF Matthew is continuing the Hebraistic use if the i as a yod.

Okay, redid and still get 1673 at the end; mia and Nwe are back at two syllables each, plus anomia is 4 syll, because Matt uses dia as two syllables elsewhere (di' as abbreviation means he accounts it as di-a). So any dia endings, should be two syllables, never mind it has a Yah sound. So now will recheck and repost the revision later.

Bonus: that change helped prove the amen leyw humiv phrase (sometimes with hoti) is a benchmarker. Now I balance to 1540. Matthew is using it anaphorically, which will mean the syllable counts between each such phrase (counting their syllables or not) will SEVEN or be evenly divisible by 3.

Paul does that in Eph1 (eudokia..thelematos, epainon, then alliteratively with proeto, prothesin, proelpikotos). So maybe Matt24-25 is where he gets that rhetorical device, though it was long common in classical Greek. So the Lord, whose mother knew classical Greek, would know that and have taught Him. The anaphora is the smoking gun to meter correctness. So once we can find it, then we can know FOR SURE where the ellisions (if any) should be.

And yes, the rhythm of the same phrases has to be the same throughout. If you want to treat all uses of of kuri- as three syllables, then do. I'm not asserting that 'my' tally is right. I know it has to be 3150+63, at minimum. I don't know the maximum. I do know it has to be consistent, for the very reasons you're stating. But I don't know for sure what is the consistency intended. The Hebraistic 'yod' usage is in Matt 1, so I'm trying it out in the parsing provided so far.

K. I'm glad to hear about the anaphora as it will help us lock in some of the parsing. Can't wait to get home and get cracking.

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HEB 4:12
The word of God is alive and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of the soul and the spirit, of the joints and marrow, and is a critic of the thoughts and intents of the heart.

EDITS are highlighted in light pink. I figured out the sevening, now.

Okay, in each case the difference between the amen leyw humin clauses is divisible by 3 or 7, but the reason for the anaphora is to center on a key turning point IN HISTORY. So now I gotta go find what that is. It will be very noticeable. Dunno when I'll come up for air! When Paul did this, it took me 100 pages of writing in REPARSED to explain, and I really never finished!

Paul used the anaphora on two 'tracks' 1) playing on the 231-x in Daniel 9:24-27 and Magnificat; 2) playing on Noah's 308 or 315 or 364.

Am fainting now.

First amen leyw humin starts in Matt 24:2, syllable 57 prior, 63 at end (no hoti). Remember, Nwe, mia, and anomia now aren't dipthongs. Meter count is 6 syllables.
Translates to 93AD (end year) after, just before pre-Church Mill was supposed to start.

Next is verse 34, syll 1110 before, 1118 after (includes hoti). Trinity meter at 1110-63 OR 57. So is the first amen leyw humin occurrence included or not? Enquiring minds want to know.

Translates to 1140-1148AD (end year).

Treat the count as from 1110-57, so the total meter count is 1053, or 351 threes.

3rd is v.47, syll 1532 before, 1540 after (again includes hoti); Anaphora therefore, 3 times. 1532-1118 is Trinity meter, excluding the clause, so you exclude it from the totals, too; count still stands at 1053. Else, no meter. So the 63 includes the first occurrence; the 1532 excludes the 2nd.

Translates to 1562-1570AD (end year).

4th is 25:12, syll 2000 before, 2006 after (no hoti). 2000 OR 2006 -1532=Trinity Meter. So assume 2000-1532. So now the third occurrence is included. So add to the count, 468, so 1053+468=1521, or 507 threes.

Translates to 2030-2036AD (end year).

5th is v.40, syll 2960 before, 2966 after (no hoti). Get this: 2960-2000 (or 2006, but presume 2000) =Trinity meter, but 2966-2000 SEVENS. So if I include BOTH the fourth and fifth occurrences, it sevens. First time I could find this happening! As if to make up for the 2nd occurrence being left out, in Chapter 24:34! Roman snub? Like Matthew leaving out Athaliah's line from Chapter 1?

So add to the count, 2966-2000=966+1521=2487, 829 threes.

Translates to 2990-2996AD (end year).

Last is v.45, 3169 before, 3175 after (no hoti). 3169-2966 SEVENS at 203 (Temple Down).

So the new threes' total is.. NOT. For the 203 addition, is not divisible by 3. HOWEVER, if instead we take 3175-1540, which was the THIRD anaphora of amen legw humin, ending Chapter 24, we get 1635 as the difference, and THAT is 545 threes.

SO: there is an OVERLAP at 1532-1540. Correlates to 1562-1570 AD, during the voting period which occurs during the REFORMATION. Because, 1540-63= 211 sevens, but 3175-1540, is 545 threes. So if counting by threes, I can't finish but the period gets overlapped. If STOPPING at 1540, it sevens; then picking up at 1540 going to 3175, no overlap, it threes. Why?

Translates to 3199-3205AD (end year).

Now, Paul built his anaphora of Time based on the BETWEENS, creating a nexus in the middle. Here, that would be the 3rd one. The one which EXCLUDES the second occurrence of amen leyw humin. Why?

Finally, the sum of the anaphora must seven. It doesn't, all the way. It sevens from 1540-63. It only threes, after that; putting the hoti on the next line doesn't help.

I gotta think about that, because it's been awhile since I worked on how Paul did it. Suspect he's aping the Lord, so now gotta go figure that out.

YIKES! There IS an overlap, and it's a doozie!

1540 (end of 3rd amen legw humin, last in chapter 24) -63 = 1477 years, = 211 SEVENS.

3175 (end of last amen legw humin in Chapter 25) - 1110 (when 2nd amen legw humin of Chap 24 starts) = 2065, 295 sevens, total of 506 sevens, and the overlap is 430 years (same as the time Israel was in Egypt, 400 of which at the end, were slavery)! The 430 is neither divisible by seven nor by 3.

Now when Paul did this, he used the overlap to show a turning point in history (centered around Constantine after he beat Licinius and then started NEW ROME), Eph 1:12. And so it was: that's when Church officially became political, uniting Church and State.

Well, Paul denoted the CAUSE, for in our overlap HERE IN MATTHEW, during 1110+30 to 1540+30, the Catholic Church had everyone in thrall. 1540+30 was when (on April 21), the POPE excommunicated Elizabeth I, and England finally did have HER Reformation, lasting until (ding ding ding) the end of the historical voting period none of them even knew, 1640 AD (Matthew 25 benchmarks 1607 rather than 1610, if I did the parsing right in that section). BIBLE FREED FROM SLAVERY AT LAST.

BTW, the diekonesamen in v.44, is now 6 syll (nee: 5). Again, because it seems the di sound is separated by Matthew in writing (de remains swallowed when post-positive particle de).

Boy! You two are busy little beavers! Having only found you a couple of days ago, I still am very lost!
Question: Why are you metering Matt.24? Is the END-ALL an attempt to find the day of the Lords return? Or, are you trying to chart ALL history until that time? IF a syllible=year you've got a WHOLE LOT OF WORK AHEAD! What's your "end game"?

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@ Ron

I'm particularly interested in knowing about the structure of the Church Age. I don't expect Matt 24-25 to provide the date of our Lord's return, but I do believe it might show some recurrent 'time window' potentials for the end of the age. Where are we now on that timeline? What historical trends can we expect to see in the near future?

Jesus' disciples asked Him,"when will these things happen, and what will be the sign of Your coming, and of the end of the age?”

Jesus replied with Matt 24-25. To fully understand His answer, we have to understand His meter.

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HEB 4:12
The word of God is alive and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of the soul and the spirit, of the joints and marrow, and is a critic of the thoughts and intents of the heart.

Hi, Ron, sorry we seem so confusing! My answer is like Anonynomenon's. Think of it as a Church Mortality Table. The OT provided those for Israel, but Israel was promised set time. Church is not. But still, a mortality table is useful to know likelihoods, for times are bad when the likelihoods rise. As in a regular insurance actuarial table, there are certain 'ages' when you're more likely to get sick or die, though there's no guarantee you WILL in that year.

God is Omniscient, and knows all the WHAT IFs. WHAT IF the Rapture DOESN'T happen? He foreknows what history will look like, but that doesn't mean we'll actually BE there. So say the Rapture happens tonight. The history would still be the same, but it would be playing during Trib or Mill.

For the Rapture is based on FIXED BODIES, John 17:20ff. However many CHURCH-TIME bodies Christ paid for on the Cross, was up to Father's discretion. We don't know and can't know WHO they are. So can't predict the Rapture. When Christ spoke Matt24, He'd not yet GONE to the Cross, and it was up to Father THEN how many souls' sins would be paid for, and Son would be accepting each time. So post-Cross He knows (see the clever wording in Acts 1:7, where He no longer says He doesn't know), but pre? And we still don't know.

Now think: does SATAN know? Presume he does. The other reason for the Rapture is a negative one, just like the Temple went down: due to apostasy. So Satan's angling to make believers so apostate we have to be recalled. Then he'd win in his gambit against God, who Foreknows it won't happen, but it CAN.

So the 'end game' is to learn what Jesus meant, so to be better informed Scripturally. Since all the NT plays on Matt24-25, and since we can prove the meter which creates that timeline (which Moses started, back in Genesis 1, so the meters are doctrinal and well defined) -- it seems kinda important to do this admittedly arcane syllable counting. It wasn't arcane to the audience who got it: they memorized by syllable counts already.

No scholar knows about this in Bible yet, but it's funny how long known and documented, is the ISSUE of syllable counting to develop meter, in classical Greek. Problem is, Bible meter doesn't require long or short syllables, stress, doesn't create spondees or dactyls, etc. One consonant sound and one vowel sound whether Hebrew or Greek, is a syllable.

Does this help?

@ Brainout

I found a counting error at the end of Matt 24:28. You have that ending at 850 syllables, but I found that to be the 840th syllable. Everything after that seems to be off by 10, and it throws the 1050 off. I'm working on fixing it now.

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HEB 4:12
The word of God is alive and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of the soul and the spirit, of the joints and marrow, and is a critic of the thoughts and intents of the heart.

THANK you! You don't have to fix it, that affects all the numbers after. You keep on doing it your way...

I'm fixing it my way. So far I'm getting very good results.

Its looking like δύο is supposed to be one syllable.

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HEB 4:12
The word of God is alive and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of the soul and the spirit, of the joints and marrow, and is a critic of the thoughts and intents of the heart.

Okay, I was just wondering about that. So then mia also one syllable?

Going back to square one, here.

I would not elide mia or dia. It doesn't sound right to me. Duo is different, because as an off-shoot of the Canaanite language, the Upsilon, Omicron, and Omega all originate from the Paleo-Hebrew uou (modern vav). If you pronounce the Delta, Koine style (which is the same as Hebrew style 'lo dagesh'), then dou is really dthwo. Therefore one syllable. The fricative form of the Delta/Dalet allows for smooth elision, in my own opinion.

If the elision is not smooth, then I don't like using it. Kurios does not sound smooth to me. Resh has no fricative form therefore it has a stopping effect that makes the 'I' stand separate.

ἀφίεται seems ok to me, because the ph sound is the fricative form of Pey in Hebrew (lo dagesh). Do you see what I mean?

Also, Im seriously considering not eliding δὲ εἴπῃ in Matt 24:48. Seems like it would sound like δὲ ἴπῃ. The εἴ seems longer than the ῃ. In fact, I think I might leave all of Matt 24:44-51 completely unelided. In verse 49, the Theta in μεθυόντων, in seems to thick to work the same way as δύο.

Ill let you know what I get.

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HEB 4:12
The word of God is alive and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of the soul and the spirit, of the joints and marrow, and is a critic of the thoughts and intents of the heart.

Well, I edited my post after you made yours. I'm gonna look at the whole thing de novo.

AHA I was correcting the 10 too low in the first page at verse 12, but skipped to 28 to add it back and make sure my 1082 was still preserved, forgot to edit the other totals in between! So the 1082 is still right. Whew what a relief!
Will redo and will attach the revision, later.

You know, I wouldn't ask God where the error was until just now. Won't wait so long next time!

As for ellision with prepositions, the actual ellision is AGAINST the preposition, not against the next word. So de-eipen becomes d'eipen in pronunciation. It's not like krasis.

Not sure I agree on the fricatives, but I see your point.

Lol, well I'm glad to hear that you found the error. Ive started over again. Im getting a pretty consistent pattern two with stricter elision. I don't thing the counts differ much from yours. We will have to compare them when I'm done.

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HEB 4:12
The word of God is alive and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of the soul and the spirit, of the joints and marrow, and is a critic of the thoughts and intents of the heart.

Okay, good. Looking forward to it. Thank you again for noticing v.28, since I forgot to fix 13-17!

Hey, I finally got Matt 24 parsed to a point that I'm (for now) satisfied. Once I get Matt 25 parsed by the same elision rules that I used to parse Matt 24, I'll post it.

I chose not to elide anything at all for Matt 24:47-51. Based on the rest of the meter, κύριος can not be considered 3 syllables, so δὲ εἴπῃ in verse 48 would be the only good candidate for elision. However, in this case, I do not think it would be grammatically correct since the beginning of the clause is ἐὰν δὲ εἴπῃ. I believe the presence of ἐὰν calls for a grammatical pause between δὲ and εἴπῃ. If you look at all of the occurrences of δὲ in Matt 24's interlinear translation, verse 48 is the only one placing a comma after δὲ. I realize that the original text did not use commas, but I think the grammatical pause does belong there, else it will sound like a run-on sentence.

Matt 24:48 Interlinear.

We have to take both phonetics and grammar into account when eliding. The text has to make sense when its read out loud.

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HEB 4:12
The word of God is alive and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of the soul and the spirit, of the joints and marrow, and is a critic of the thoughts and intents of the heart.

Well, it's not right for a comma to be after ean de. We don't even pause in English. For example, 'even if it were true' would be a clause at 'true', not at 'if'. The way they spoke de was to append it to the prior word, since it's post-positive. So the 'd' sound's vowel gets swallowed if the next word has the same vowel. Again, the way ellision works with articles and prepositions, is to omit the ending vowel of that article or preposition, so the clarity of the noun or verb following, stays intact.

There's also no verb or noun in Greek with deipen sound. Closest is the verb to DINE, deipnew. Can't be confused with the common legw.

BTW, I edited my post here re the anaphora, viewtopic.php?f=16&t=512&p=2243#p2243 . It balances, but I still don't know why.

I don't know, I cant get verse 47-51 to work with any combination of elisions, without screwing up the rest of the chapter. Hopefully, chapter 25 will reveal more.

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HEB 4:12
The word of God is alive and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of the soul and the spirit, of the joints and marrow, and is a critic of the thoughts and intents of the heart.

Well, look at the dipthongs. I only elided d'eipen and ekei-estai. Am treating kurios as two syllables, esthiei as two syllables (es-thye), and methuonton as three syllables (meth-won-ton). See if that helps?

I'm almost 100% certain that Chap24 should be 1673 syllables, because Luke uses the same style.

It's Years-to-Mill when writing/talking, plus even division of 1050 and 490 or 560 (here 1050+560), to reconcile the 'old' timeline pre-Church with the new 1050 that starts at Crucifixion. So Luke did 35+1050, so at the end it's 1085, since Church started the same year as Crucifixion, but by the time Luke writes, it's 28 years later, writing 63 years (heh) AFTER Zecharias got the announcement (hahaha, dateline meter in Luke 1 when story starts with Zech).

Ive got 1673 syllables, too, but if I count kurios as two syllables, then I lose a ton of subsevening and I lose the 455=105. It doesn't sound right to me, and it messes the whole meter up as well.

Unless ἐάν is really one syllable, that might change things. Gotta sleep now. I'll see what changes can be made tomorrow.

Edit:

The syllables counts between my anaphoretical clauses are divisible by 7, but not 3. Is that still a good sign.

ok. going to bed for real this time.

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HEB 4:12
The word of God is alive and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of the soul and the spirit, of the joints and marrow, and is a critic of the thoughts and intents of the heart.

EDIT: redid the doc, attached here as pdf. Lemme know if you want it in Word format.

Well, don't do kurios at two syllables if it sounds wrong to you. I don't see how you can count ean at one syllable, as the ea construction is long used as two syllables, i.e., the play Medea. The ae is one syllable, but not ea.

I finally FOUND the overlap, and the whole thing now sevens. Search on 'YIKES!' in this page, to go straight to it. Overlap is actually a mirror: 1540 (1570 AD, beginning of the second mid-1050 voting period and English Reformtion, that very year Elizabeth I was excommunicated). So the sevening is from 63 (93 AD end year when the Mill was supposed to start) to 1540, and from 1540 to 3175, w/overlap from 1110 (1140AD) to 1540 (1570 AD). The sevening only works WITH the overlap: because (ding ding ding) the overlap period itself does NOT seven, being 430 years long (sound familiar?), heh.

Same mechanism as in the epainon counting here. So now I know where Paul derived that style! Whew! As you'll see, the count started AFTER the first epainon CLAUSE ended, and stopped with the last epainon clause, with only the distances between clauses, used. The count for the second epainon clause was from the beginning of the second clause to the end of the third, creating an overlap.

AS HERE IN MATTHEW!!

DANG, I owe you so much. You've been bugging me about Matt24-25 for a long time, and I kept on kicking and screaming, not to look at it. YOU WERE RIGHT. It's my smoking gun for Paul's style. Until now, I was beginning to think I was hallucinating the results I got in Ephesians, since I couldn't find the style elsewhere. WHEW AND THANK YOU!!!

Sorry, I forgot to tell you the other day, but in Matt 24:34, you elided hard breathing, genea haute.

And you forgot makaryos in verse 46, if you're going for the 2 syllable kuryos. You can get more subsevening with a 3 syllable kurios.

Sorry, I don't mean to be so critical. This chapter is just driving me nuts.

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HEB 4:12
The word of God is alive and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of the soul and the spirit, of the joints and marrow, and is a critic of the thoughts and intents of the heart.

Okay, well I'm sticking with genea haute because it's the a in genea which gets swallowed. Ellision occurs only on the ending vowel of the first word, never the second.

As for makarios, lemme think about that. See, the problem is that accent is normally on the penultimate syllable, and in the original mss there were no accent marks (no diacritics at all). Only in the much later manuscripts, and by then pronunciation changed a lot. So I have to test rhythm, since makar, not merely one syllable, precedes.

The other issue is that autou is a significant variant added in the Byzantine family for verse 45. So that would add two syllables. In which case, hoti in verse 47 belongs in the next clause not part of amen legw humin. If I have to add a syllable prior, I'd probably de-couple ho ouranos in verse 35, to offset a claim that makarios is only 3 syllables.

For now I'm sure that the amen legw humin clause terminates at 1540 (=1570AD), just not sure which way it does. JUST IN TIME WHEN THE 3RD 490 CLOSES, AND THE HISTORICAL 70-YEAR VOTING PERIOD BEGINS...

It's just too rich: the very year the Pope who THINKS he speaks for God excommunicates the only ruler in the West who actually CARES about Bible being free for the people, GOD speaks instead to protect her from all comers, and it's a miracle England and OUR Bible survived. Absent this, we'd have no English Bible, and the KJVO people would have no King James rewrite, either. America would have no common Bible in English. Remember, Roanoke was only 9 years after the KJV. If the common people couldn't have a Bible, then would America have existed? Interesting question to ponder.

For as mistranslated as the KJV is, it was almost instantly (by law, okay) COMMONLY TAUGHT. That was a new thing, and only England was really doing it. For had there been no Elizabeth I with her Walsingham to stop the Catholics, there'd have been no King James to commission a Bible for all England to READ (not just the Book of Common Prayer, the BIBLE).

Remember how the Colonel first taught us from the KJV versus the mss -- until he got too tired of all the translation errors and switched to NASB?

And here's another irony for you: the Catholic plotters in light of the excommunication planned (like in the movie) to murder Elizabeth, with the Duke of Norfolk planning afterwards to marry one of my ancestors (through adoption, at least, per my adopted family) -- Mary, Queen of Scots. Ironic, huh. If my adopted mother is watching occasionally from heaven (for if angels watch us, why not the humans), I bet she's laughing her head off. How many times she showed me that paper claiming she was descended from Queen Mary!

Oh and by the way -- that 1110 start equals 1140 AD, and stands for the Cistercians, notably Clairaux, which is kinda the grand-daddy of all modern monasteries. VERY popular. They were known for making BIBLES as well as manual labor, and in 1145 one of their number became POPE. See the topical tie? Begins with BIBLES, ends with BIBLE, starts with a POPE, ends with one. Can't be coincidental. But the syllables in between 1110 and 1540, might be off, and have to be reassigned, ellision versus dipthong, or variants which we're not using but should, etc.

As usual, you bring up excellent points. And yeah, it's mind-wracking, all because our ancestors didn't pass on teaching the meter to their kids, or we'd be doing this as easily as multiplication tables or ABC's.

Are you saying that αὐτοῦ in Matt 24:45 doesn't belong there?

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HEB 4:12
The word of God is alive and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of the soul and the spirit, of the joints and marrow, and is a critic of the thoughts and intents of the heart.

No, not saying that. The CNTTS apparatus shows a TON of later mss of the Byzantine family which ADD 'autou' after 'kurios'. Some are Aland Category II, so it might be valid. This is one of the many benefits of the meter, to help sleuth out which variants might really be part of the Autograph.

So in the final analysis, still the amen legw humin phrase ends at 1540, just not sure which adjustments will actually be needed.

I don't know that hoti should be part of the anaphorical clauses, I mean, doesn't the anaphora have to be uniform?

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HEB 4:12
The word of God is alive and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of the soul and the spirit, of the joints and marrow, and is a critic of the thoughts and intents of the heart.

Matt 25:3 αἱ γὰρ μωραὶ λαβοῦσαι τὰς λαμπάδας αὐτῶν οὐκ ἔλαβον μεθ' ἑαυτῶν ἔλαιον.

What do you think about the highlighted word above? Nestle GNT 1904 does not include it, but the rest of the biblehub manuscripts do. Do you believe it belongs their? Why or why not?

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HEB 4:12
The word of God is alive and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of the soul and the spirit, of the joints and marrow, and is a critic of the thoughts and intents of the heart.

Looks like autwn should be included, though there is a lot of variation; many manuscripts don't even have the verse. Some substitute heautwn but that looks like dittography, since the same word is later in the verse.

Grammatically, it's needed. That to me is the strongest argument for autwn. The whole point of the passage is YOUR lamp, YOUR oil, not just anyone's.

That's good, because I really need it to be there. I'm about a third of the way through Matt 25. Hopefully I can have it finished tomorrow.

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HEB 4:12
The word of God is alive and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of the soul and the spirit, of the joints and marrow, and is a critic of the thoughts and intents of the heart.

Brainout,

You might have a second anaphora going on there!!! It looks like your parsing is probably right, though I'm still uncomfortable with some of the elisions, but that's my problem.


Matt 24:2 ὁ δὲ ἀποκριθεὶς εἶπεν ends at syllable 47

Matt 25:12 ὁ δὲ ἀποκριθεὶς εἶπεν ends at syllable 2000

The clause is 7 syllables long, so there are 1993 syllables between the end of the first anaphoretical clause and the beginning of the second.
so 1993-47=1946, which is 7x278

What does it mean???????

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HEB 4:12
The word of God is alive and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of the soul and the spirit, of the joints and marrow, and is a critic of the thoughts and intents of the heart.

Funny you posted this. I've been waiting for you to come back. Am looking at the VERY SAME IDEA, while waiting for my clothes to dry! And I wish I knew what it meant!

Don't just accept my ellisions. Do what your heart tells you after talking to God. I'm not sure what I'm doing is right, but rather it's a WHAT IF. For example, in all my other metering I've almost always treated kurios as three syllables. But MATTHEW might not be doing that.

Somewhere between Matt 25:24 and :40 I think my assumptions are wrong, for I should get 2590 even, but get 2594. But at the same time, what about the amen legw humin that still seems so right at 2960-2966? Maybe it's not right.

My 2000 ends at the same place as yours, so far. But when you play with the distances between the amen clauses, some of them seven or three, where I didn't expect them to.

Here's what I do know: there must be a sevening, and the OVERLAPPING one(s) are stressed periods of history. Then when you look up that period, there's something intensely Biblical about it, esp. on a theme of freeing up Bible for the common man to get and read. That's what Paul's epainon meant, and with our hindsight into the history, we should find it first here in Matt24-25, which I'm now convinced is the 'source' for Paul's style of using anaphora.

But maybe I'm completely off. Ask God, see what insight He gives you, since He surely hired you to do this Matt24-25 metering, for which I'm eternally grateful. Will have to hold a lot of banquets for you in heaven, or something else of major celebration!

Ok. What if the ἀμὴν λέγω ὑμῖν in Matt 24:47 really ends at syllable 1532, not 1540 like you initially thought?

We both seem to agree that the ἀμὴν λέγω ὑμῖν of Matt 25:12 ends at 2006.

So 2000-1532=468 or 156x3.

So instead of Matt 24:47 benchmarking Elizabeth I's excommunication in 1570 AD, it really might be benchmarking the Edict of Saint-Germain in 1562 AD; providing limited tolerance to the Protestant Huguenots in the Roman Catholic realm. Its a back-handed edict of toleration. Didn't RBT talk about the Huguenots as the pivot to a client nation?

An edict is supposed to be an authoritative decree, like saying ἀμὴν λέγω ὑμῖν.

Anyways, that's the only way I can get the anaphorical clause of Matt 24:47 to work without including hoti.

BTW, I think God hired the both of us for this job, because there is no way I could have made it this far without your help. Thank you so much.

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HEB 4:12
The word of God is alive and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of the soul and the spirit, of the joints and marrow, and is a critic of the thoughts and intents of the heart.

Well, the argument more in favor of 1540 is that it begins the historical voting period, 1570-1640 AD being the exact same period as the English Reformation. That period wouldn't have happened without Elizabeth being excommunicated. However, yeah she hired Walsingham to first free the Huguenots back in 1570.

That doesn't preclude the importance of 1562. Its period is smack dab in the amen legw humin text. But you keep going with your hypothesis 'your' way, see if it tests out in the other ways.

As for hoti, I don't know it should be on the same line. The conjunction works like our English "that:" (with colon) to introduce a list or quotation, in which case it belongs to the prior clause (and a new paragraph or clause begins with the first list item); or, it can be like our English 'that' as the beginning of a clause. My natural instinct is to put hoti on the next clause, but I'm not sure the Greek requires that.

BTW: my blood ancestors were allegedly Huguenots. Ironic, huh.

I really don't know what the final results should be, but surely these distances with the phrase are intended and important.

Ok. I tested both 1570 AD and 1562 AD as amein bench marks. I didn't find much with 1570 AD, but if you add 1562 AD +59 syllables/years (vs 49 καὶ ἄρξηται τύπτειν τοὺς συνδούλους αὐτοῦ), we get 1621 AD, which is when Louis XIII tried to eradicate the Huguenots in the First Huguenot Rebellion. So king Loui XIII began beating his syndoulous.

The whole thing depends on whether or not hoti belongs in the anaphorical clause. That will determine which elision and parsing technique is correct.

I didn't get a chance to do any metering today. I just "accidentally" stumbled on the ὁ δὲ ἀποκριθεὶς εἶπεν anaphora, so I think God wanted me to see that before I continued metering. Of course, there are no accidents with God, lol.

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HEB 4:12
The word of God is alive and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of the soul and the spirit, of the joints and marrow, and is a critic of the thoughts and intents of the heart.

On GeneYrs, you flagged 70 AD as a "Revised-Scheduled Trib beginning". Was this a possible Rapture window? Its interesting that the first anaphorical ho d'apokritheis eipen is 7 syllables after the Temple destruction.

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HEB 4:12
The word of God is alive and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of the soul and the spirit, of the joints and marrow, and is a critic of the thoughts and intents of the heart.

Yeah, it was.

I also just did a worksheet on some threes and sevens which you can modify for different syllable counts, attached here. It doesn't test all the possible combos, but it helps get a sense of the flow. The even/3 or /7 numbers are highlighted in yellow. Feel free to revise it as you see fit. I just got tired of recalculating the numbers by hand. The worksheet is Excel 2002, for most compatibility. (I usually still use Lotus DOS 1-2-3, but it can read Excel 2002, which is native, here. I don't know the conditional formatting formula to blank out results with remainders, mea maxima culpa.)

Wow, thanks.

What is the difference between the εἴ diphthong and ῃ? I doubt they're purely identical.

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HEB 4:12
The word of God is alive and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of the soul and the spirit, of the joints and marrow, and is a critic of the thoughts and intents of the heart.

Well, re-download the xls (which I just now replaced), because I just created some Custom Views (an option in View of Excel 2000-2003) which hide the Threes or the Sevens so you can only see one set. There's also an 'AllShow' Custom view which resets the worksheet so all columns show.

Most of the threes and sevens SEEM to occur between 1110 and 1540, still. But your comments about the 1118 and 1532 ended up being validated, too. As a kind of top of a bell curve?

As for ei being a dipthong, it's treated as one vowel sound. Originally all vowels were short. They used to be pronounced separately. But over time the two vowels together elongate into what we now call 'long' vowels. They are really dipthongs.

Hey, still metering, but I just wanted to alert you to another possible anaphora in Matt 24:47 and Matt25:30.

ἐκεῖ ἔσται ὁ κλαυθμὸς καὶ ὁ βρυγμὸς τῶν ὀδόντων

I don't have numbers to play with right now, but I'm working on it.

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HEB 4:12
The word of God is alive and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of the soul and the spirit, of the joints and marrow, and is a critic of the thoughts and intents of the heart.

Yeah, that would qualify as an anaphora. Simple de apokritheis doesn't, because it's not a refrain. Anaphora always has the quality of a refrain.

Which, of course, takes us back to hupostasis' thread on outer darkness, here. The anaphora will help us interpret it.

You don't think ho d'apokritheis eipen is anaphorical? I think it definitely is.

Or do you mean just the short phrase d'apokritheis?

What do you mean by refrain???

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HEB 4:12
The word of God is alive and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of the soul and the spirit, of the joints and marrow, and is a critic of the thoughts and intents of the heart.

When a book frequently has dialogue, to say 'he said that' is not a refrain. Think of a song or repeated slogan.

Hickory, dickory, dock
The Mouse ran up the clock.
...
Hickory, dickory, dock.

The 'Hickory' phrase is a refrain. In really good literature, you PACE a key sentence or refrain at intervals to serve as a paragraph, roping off what is in between. Poets do it a lot, but so too in speeches. Such as, the one we have here. Each repetition of the phrase links to its prior use and elucidates or applies what went BEFORE the current use, to make a new application or meaning out of it.

Key phrases repeated in Bible we already know have meaning, but we forget their walling-off function when they are placed close together. I too forgot that 'weeping and gnashing' is a phrase repeated here in these two chapters, so they qualify as an anaphora, if three times.

Here, we don't have it three times, but it's a refrain in Matthew (he uses it 6 times, Luke only uses it in Luke 13:28, NOT in Luke 21; the other gospels don't use it at all). So maybe it's important to measure the syllable distance.

I noticed that in your reparsing of Matt 25, you didn't elide ἐξέρχεσθε εἰς (in verse 6), or any of the other similar sounding diphthongs. Could you explain why?

Also, you mentioned 28 indicated spiritual stagnation. Is that because its 7 short of 35? What does 91 indicate as far as spiritual growth?

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HEB 4:12
The word of God is alive and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of the soul and the spirit, of the joints and marrow, and is a critic of the thoughts and intents of the heart.

It doesn't elide, because there's a pause between the verb and prep; to concatenate them is not a dipthong but ellision; here, eis is a purpose clause, separate from the command to 'come out'. It's repeated, the erchomai eis construction, like in Matt 25:21 and :23; but those aren't purpose clauses; they are clauses, though. While I couldn't find any eis endings to erchomai verb forms, it's often a participial ending (as in apochritheis, Matt 25:12), so I'm thinking eis should not there be elided.

I don't recall saying 28 meant spiritual stagnation. If I did say that, I was wrong. It means growth under pressure (21+7) everywhere, so far as I can tell.

Subsevens are all GROUP numbers, even with the datelines; individuals maturing, won't show directly (but you know individual maturation happens, because a 490 or 1000 cannot complete, else). So a 49 dateline in Matt24 means not only 49 years from x (when Herod started to rebuild 2nd Temple), but also that the believers were so negative it was Diaspora quality (ties in neatly with what He'll say about the Temple going down).

Take the example of Matt 25:10, which in the meter (I've redone it, but there it's the same) ends at 1946 (1976, when the Colonel was at the height of his teaching); the difference between the last sevening is 273 (prior sevening was end Matt 24, 1673). So during that 91x3 years, since it's a 91x3, seems like there was good individual but not group, growth.

Also, the first way you did the Matt24/25 parsing by logical paragraph might still be an ADDITIONAL valid way to parse the text. But for the timeline, we have to do cumulative totals by clause.

But if you disagree, do what you think best. We're all kinda still winging it here, learning from the text where these ellisions/dipthongs are, what the numbers mean. We've no 'scholarly' info to go on. The scholars don't know of this meter, they keep on looking for poetic meter (for 300 years, since Robert Lowth, it's a raging debate among scholars every year, where Bible meter exists).

I agree with you on not eliding eis. I just didn't know how to justify it. Every time I elide an ei sound, I get all sorts of problems in the meter. But it can still be parsed, just differently.

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HEB 4:12
The word of God is alive and powerful, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of the soul and the spirit, of the joints and marrow, and is a critic of the thoughts and intents of the heart.