with or without accent??

Greek Learning Greek
1

Acts 13:15 μετὰ δὲ τὴν ἀνάγνωσιν τοῦ νόμου καὶ τῶν προφητῶν ἀπέστειλαν οἱ ἀρχισυνάγωγοι πρὸς αὐτοὺς λέγοντες Ἄνδρες ἀδελφοί, εἴ τις ἔστιν ἐν ὑμῖν λόγος παρακλήσεως πρὸς τὸν λαόν, λέγετε.

εἴ τις ἔστιν: I have seen Acts 13:15, with τις unaccented, as it is above, and in other presentations of this verse with an accent. I believe it should be accentless to produce “τις . . . λόγος” meaning “any . . . word”, but I’m shaky concerning the indefinite article, the interrogative pronoun, and dealing with enclitics. So, I have driven into the ditch again. My wheels are spinning, and I can’t pose a well-formed question.

Can anybody give a wise word on this?

2

To me it looks like it’s the εστιν whose accent is really in question (and so affects the enclitic before). “If there is some word among you…” versus “If some word among you is…”

3

Many thanks jeidsath; your suggestion checks out.

#1 εἴ τις ἔστιν (as in Perseus)
#2 εἴ τίς ἐστιν (as in Goodrich & Lukaszewski, A Reader’s Greek New Testament)

I think I understand how the sound might differ, but I don’t understand what makes the meaning differ. Can you tell me some topics I need to study? I’m missing something, but I don’t know what. Topic names, buzzwords, etc. will be helpful.

4

Chandler Greek Accentuation 938, also 949, 940, and 937. It’s really editorial practice more than anything else on this point. The Greek grammarians didn’t pass down the rule, so we go by the German grammarians.

5

Accenting won’t affect meaning on its own. It may indicate which form of a word is intended and thus show you the correct meaning but that’s different. Here the accenting should not affect meaning I wouldn’t have thought. According to Carson, as far as I can tell at least, there would be two possibilities,

  • accent the enclitic before ἐστίν → τίς ἐστιν
  • accent ἐστίν as marking existence → τις ἔστιν

Thx
D

6

UBS 5 text:

εἴ τίς ἐστιν ἐν ὑμῖν λόγος…

7

Many thanks to jeidsath, dnl, and Barry. I’ll not worry about which text is better, for I’m not ready for that question. However I see that I need some work on accentuation in relation to enclitics. I suspect that there is some material that I have studied and forgotten.

8

Here is the phrase:

εἴ τίς ἐστιν

And here are Mastronarde’s rules that seem to apply:

“the proclitic εἴ receives an acute because it precedes an enclitic. (139, 21)”

“when two or more enclitics appear in a series . . . . the convention is usually that every enclitic except the last in the series receives an acute accent on its final syllable. (p. 139)”