[B-Greek] Caragounis and vine/vineyard and branches/vines - AMPELOS and KLHMA

Eric Weiss papaweiss1 at yahoo.com
Mon Mar 19 12:12:02 EDT 2007


Chrys Caragounis in his book "The Development of Greek and the New Testament: 
  Morphology, Syntax, Phonology, and Textual Transmission" argues or posits that by 
  Jesus's time AMPELOS meant "vineyard" and KLHMA meant "vine" - as opposed to their 
  earlier meanings of "vine" and "branch," respectively. See John 15:1ff. Caragounis says this 
  fits viticulture better (e.g., vines, not branches, are pruned) as well as the OT typology of 
  Israel being a vineyard and Jesus being the New vineyard in which the vines are planted. 
   
  Caragounis then states that the Early Church Fathers who used the analogy of vine/branch 
  from John 15 for, e.g., saying that Christ was homoousios with our nature, etc., were thus 
  mistaken in their analogy (and perhaps also in their theology?).
   
  My question is: If AMPELOS and KLHMA had indeed shifted their meanings by NT times (I 
  think Caragounis even uses the word "seismological" to describe it - my book is at home), 
  would the Early Church Fathers who spoke and wrote Koinê/Byzantine Greek not have been 
  aware of this? I.e., unless AMPELOS and KLHMA had anachronistically reverted back to 
  their earlier meanings of "vine" and "branch," why would the ECFs have imposed a pre-1st 
  century meaning on those words if they themselves didn't use the terms that way?
   
  (It's in the chapter on the impact of Caragounis's thesis on the interpretation of NT texts - 
  chapter 5 perhaps?)


  Eric S. Weiss


 
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