Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Antonio Garcia <garcia.secretariagh.antonio1 AT gmail.com>]

 Dear friends in hebrew list:

     To solve the problems with "hoplites", we can use the root  [apel], dark, cause the roman legio and other armies of Egyptian empire contracted black people, among their villages, specialists in fighting on horseback,, camels, elephants, etc.   Antonio Garcia Hurtado.

2013/4/19 Barry H. <nebarry AT verizon.net>

On 4/18/2013 7:14 PM, Will Parsons wrote:
>> Correct me if I’m wrong, but it’s my understanding that only a little of
>> Greek literature from before Homer survives, and even in Homer the picture
>> is of citizen soldiers, not a professional or even semi-professional class
>> of elite soldiers as existing then. Therefore any argument that the
>> term οπλιτης/hoplite didn’t exist before about 500 BC is an argument from
>> silence, not evidence.
>
> You're right about Greek literature before Homer, but the point is
> that to the best of my knowledge Homer doesn't use the term
> ὁπλῖται/hoplites, and although he does use the word ὅπλον/hoplon, it's
> with the sense "tools" or "tackle", not in the sense "shield" or
> "armour" that gave rise to the form _hoplites_.
>
> Furthermore, the term _hoplites_ is a specialized term for a certain
> type of warrior that fought in a very specialized type of formation
> (the "phalanx") that required a high degree of training, quite unlike
> the bronze-age "heroic" warfare depicted in the Iliad.
>
> You say this is an argument from silence, but I say, why assume a
> specialized term for a type of warrior existed in Homeric times when
> there's no evidence that either the word or the type of warfare
> associated with it existed in Homer's time (let alone the still
> earlier time of the action of the Iliad.  I have to agree to what
> George wrote in an earlier reply, this is a matter of possibility
> vs. probability, and the probability seems quite slim, not enough to
> warrent equating חפלתי with ὁπλίτης.
>
> Well, at this point I'm going to drop the matter, since it seems to be
> getting somewhat tangential to Biblical Hebrew.
>

In Plato's Laches, one of the starting points for the discussion on
courage and moral virtue is the new style of warfare involving hopla.
hoplites is originally an adjective meaning "wearing armor" but by
classical times comes to be understood in the technical sense you
discuss above. The earliest attested use seems to be in Herodotus.

--
N.E. Barry Hofstetter
The American Academy
http://www.americanacademy.net

The North American Reformed Seminary

http://tnars.net
Bible Translation Magazine
http://bible-translation.net

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