Papyri

Greek Koine and Biblical and Medieval Greek
1

In legal Papyri-documents sometimes at the end appear sentences like:

εγραψεν υπερ αυτου Διονυσιος … ο προγεγραμμενος δια το αυτον μη επιστασθαι γραμματα.

(Dionysius, who has written the foregoing text, has written for him, as he is illiterate; Tebtunis Papyrus 104, 92 BCE).

For μη επιστασθαι in many cases one finds: μη ειδεναι/ειδοτος γραμματα (does not know letters).

I have two questions:

1: Could the difference between επιστασθαι and ειδεναι/ειδοτος be that επιστασθαι means “not able to write” (Literal translation : not able to place letters), so probably the Person could read, whilst ειδεναι/ειδοτος means “not able to read (and write) = being illliterate”?

2: Why εφιστημι (in the Papyri επιστημι) here always in MP.Pres.Inf. instead of A.Pres.Inf (επιθστηναι)?

2

ἐπίσταμαι and ἐφίστημι are different, strange though it is. You may wish to check the first in your dictionary.

I’ll take a look for any examples that seem to distinguish between reading and writing for ἐπίσταμαι, though I’d be pretty surprised to find one.

3

Here is Xenophon:

ὥσπερ εἰ εἴποις ὅτι δεῖ γράμματα ἐπίστασθαι τὸν μέλλοντα δυνήσεσθαι τὰ ὑπαγορευόμενα γράφειν καὶ τὰ γεγραμμένα ἀναγιγνώσκειν.

Not that it gets us very far. He needs to know his letters to be able to both γράφειν and ἀναγιγνώσκειν, but it doesn’t examine ἀναγιγνώσκειν alone.

Isaiah seems to settle it though:

καὶ ἔσονται ὑμῖν πάντα τὰ ῥήματα ταῦτα ὡς οἱ λόγοι τοῦ βιβλίου τοῦ ἐσφραγισμένου τούτου, ὃ ἐὰν δῶσιν αὐτὸ ἀνθρώπῳ ἐπισταμένῳ γράμματα λέγοντες Ἀνάγνωθι ταῦτα· καὶ ἐρεῖ Οὐ δύναμαι ἀναγνῶναι, ἐσφράγισται γάρ. καὶ δοθήσεται τὸ βιβλίον τοῦτο εἰς χεῖρας ἀνθρώπου μὴ ἐπισταμένου γράμματα, καὶ ἐρεῖ αὐτῷ Ἀνάγνωθι τοῦτο· καὶ ἐρεῖ Οὐκ ἐπίσταμαι γράμματα.

So the LXX translator, at least, uses it to mean “I can’t read.”

4

Thanks. επισταμαι : I never thought of that possibility!

So it’s “being skilled with letters” > not able to read and write > being illiterate.

These non-literary Papyri are very interesting texts, one can see, that the world in manny aspects hasn’t changed that much: People had the same things on their minds : renting, buying, trading, marriages, divorces, adoptions, taxes, births, funerals.
And since they are mostly not very long, it’s not a giant’s job to tranbslate them. Unless of course, one looks up the wrong verb!

5

Well, yes. More specifically, in such documents I don’t think there’s any difference between επιστασθαι and ειδεναι. His “not knowing letters” just means he ’s illiterate, can neither read nor write. The two went together in the education system. They didn’t learn to read without writing.

6

A quick search suggests a change in vocabulary over time rather than any difference in nuance.
ἐπίστασθαι is less common (~ 50 hits) and seldom occurs after the Ptolemaic era.
μὴ εἰδέναι γράμματα occurs 343 times in published documents but only very rarely before the first century CE.
The formulae remain the same: verb of saying (often ppl of φάσκω)/διά + τὸ μὴ εἰδέναι + γράμματα/γράφειν. We can be sure that it’s formulaic because the phrase is often abbreviated to, e.g., φαμε μη ειδ γρα, and remains unaltered for centuries. Compare BGU IV 1126, dated to 9 BCE, and BGU XVII 2675, dated to 481 CE.

Verbs in -μι fell out of usage in the common language. Perhaps the same can be said for those in -αμαι? οἶδα resisted for some time because it was so common, the same way the commonest irregular verbs resist normalisation in modern languages. Anyway, I’m sure Gignac or one of those reference works on grammar/historical syntax has an answer.