Some oddities in biblic greek

[jcarbaut]

I am learning greek and at the same time trying to read some parts of the Old Testament (in the Septuaginta). The last time I learned greek in school was 20 years ago, so it's quite a challenge... Also, sorry if my english is bad, my native language is french.

Here I am a bit puzzled by Genesis 32.27-28 (see http://www.ellopos.net/elpenor/physis/s ... 2.asp?pg=3 but I use a recent edition of the septuagint from Bibelwissenschaft, with more or less same contents) :

27 εἶπεν δὲ αὐτῷ Τί τὸ ὄνομά σού ἐστιν; ὁ δὲ εἶπεν Ιακωβ. 28 εἶπεν δὲ αὐτῷ Οὐ κληθήσεται ἔτι τὸ ὄνομά σου Ιακωβ, ἀλλὰ Ισραηλ ἔσται τὸ ὄνομά σου, ὅτι ἐνίσχυσας μετὰ θεοῦ καὶ μετὰ ἀνθρώπων δυνατός.

27 And he said to him, What is thy name? and he answered, Jacob. 28 And he said to him, Thy name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel shall be thy name; for thou hast prevailed with God, and shalt be mighty with men.

* First, proper nouns have no breathing nor accents, but I have an explanation of this here (sorry, in french) : http://www.persee.fr/web/revue....._6447_t1_0289_0000_2

Actually, Rahlfs puts no accentuation on proper nouns that don't come directly from greek but were translated from Hebrew.

* Then, there is this Οὐ in uppercase (and in the sentences above, there are other occurences). I believe it's just a negation in the middle of a sentence, so why in uppercase ?

* Last, accents : I learned long ago that each word has one and only one accent. But σου has none, and ὄνομά has two of them ! Is there some rule I don't know about accents ?

Funnily, I have also a greek-french edition of "Church History" of Eusebius, with a quote of this same sentence, where accents look much more like what I learned.

Could anyone give me some explanations about these peculiarities, or other I may find in the Old Testament ?

Jean-Claude Arbaut