Robert's initial answer will be in dark blue. Svendsen's comments will be in red. Robert's rebuttal will be in light blue.

CAI's Continued Misrepresentations of the Phrase Heos Hou in Matthew 1:25

As many of you know, Robert Sungenis of CAI has been promoting a book that he and one of his assistants are writing as a response to my book, Who Is My Mother? When he first announced his intentions to write the book, I predicted at that time (through an article that was posted on this web site) that we could expect, at best, an inept attempt at a response due to the utter lack of experience and expertise on the part of its primary author. Sungenis assured the world that he personally would be "helping" its primary author with the Greek, and that we should not fear for the quality of the work.

More recently, Sungenis has provided us with a sampling of both the kind and quality of research that is being conducted for this book. He has written an article in the Q&A section of his web site purporting to answer a question regarding the Greek construction heos hou as it relates to Matt 1:25 and the question of whether or not Mary remained a virgin after the birth of Christ. Sungenis' comments are in blue and my responses are in black:

Question: Why can't we use ‘heos hou' of Genesis 26:13 (LXX) where he "grew until he became very wealthy" which does not have to mean that he ceased to have his wealth increase after he had become wealthy? Yes it does not demand that he DID continue to grow in wealth, but it seems reasonable to argue that the usage here was definitely NOT intending or enforcing the notion that his wealth ceased to further grow after he became wealthy.

You can use them, and they are good examples - all of them. Notwithstanding, let me add some information to the ongoing ‘heos hou' debate: ‘Heos' is a relative adverb. ‘Hou' is a relative pronoun. When used together, ‘heos' changes to a preposition which governs the relative pronoun. Essentially, this means that hou really has no effect on the meaning of the couplet, the operative word in the couplet being ‘heos'.

If what Sungenis means by "has no effect on the meaning" of the construction is that both forms still retain conjunctive force, then no one can disagree. If instead he means that both forms are used in identical semantic ranges (as I suspect he means), then he is incorrect. In recent years, particularly with the advent of computer-aided research, New Testament scholarship has discovered with increasing frequency that the oft-assumed paradigms and rules for prepositions, conjunctions, and other various Greek constructions no longer hold up under scrutiny. I will expand on this as we proceed; but we need to bear in mind that computer-aided research in biblical studies has really only been around for a little over a decade. GRAMCord was one of the very first fully functional Greek grammatical search programs. I was one of the beta testers of this program while I was a graduate student at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, where it was heavily promoted and even required in some classes (such as D. A. Carson's Advanced Greek Grammar class).

I don't know of any modern Greek software tool which makes the conclusions about heos hou that Svendsen does. Conclusions, such as Svendsen's, are drawn out completely by the person using the software. Appealing to Greek software tools, then, does not reinforce his position. Greek software only gives him the opportunity to research more easily the instances of the Greek grammar he seeks to investigate. But if the conclusion he draws from them has already been shaded by his insistence that heos hou is used only in the way he deems possible, then it is simply a case of Svendsen's biased interpretation of the evidence, not the evidence itself, that he brings forth from his research.

1) ‘heos hou' is used 17 times in the New Testament (Mt 1:25; 13:33; 14:22; 17:9; 18:34; 26:36; Lk 13:21; 15:8; 22:18; 24:49; Jn 13:38; Ac 21:26; 23:12; 23:14; 23:21; 25:21; 2Pt 1:19) and ‘heos hou' is used 81 times in the LXX (Greek translation of the OT Hebrew)

This is inaccurate. This is especially odd since Sungenis' assistant claims to have read my book. If he had, he surely would have known that there are eighty-five instances of this construction in the LXX, not eighty-one. One hopes this is not an example of the supposed inaccuracies ("whammies," as CAI calls them) that Sungenis' research assistant claims to have found in my book, Who Is My Mother, and to which he will be responding in his.

I was referring to the number of verses in the LXX which contain heos hou, not the number of instances. There are four verses which contain two instances of heos hou. According to the Bible Works software's version of the LXX, and Rahlfs' Septuaginta, there are 81 verses which contain heos hou.

2) ‘heos an' is used 19 times in the NT (Mt 2:13; 5:18; 5:26; 10:11, 23; 12:20; 16:28; 22:44; 23:39; 24:34) and 95 times in the LXX

Again, inaccurate. The construction "heos an" occurs twenty times in the NT and 105 times in the LXX.

Actually, six of the twenty have textual variants, and thus there is a question whether those five verses contain heos an, heos hou, or just heos. Many of the variant verses originate from Codex Sinaiticus, one of the more renowned Greek manuscripts. The verses with textual variants are Mt 5:26; 10:23; 24:34; 26:36; Mk 9:1; Lk 21:32.But here is the most important conclusion we can draw from these textual variants. The fact that the Greek writers of the varying manuscripts and their copyists have no problem in interchanging heos an with heos ou or heos shows once again that they saw no difference in meaning between the three forms. Yet Svendsen conveniently avoids mentioning this telltale sign, since obviously, it would undercut his thesis tremendously. In fact, I don't remember seeing any critical analysis of Greek manuscripts in Svendsen's treatment of this issue. Thus we already have one glaring problem in Svendsen's work, among others, as we shall see.

As for the 95 instances of in the LXX opposed to Svendsen's 105, it appears according to Bible Works software, we are both wrong, since they count 114 verses where heos an appears in the LXX, and some of them contain two uses of heos an (e.g., Dt. 28:20), so the total instances is actually higher than 114.

3) ‘heos otou' [sic] is used 4 times in the NT (Mt 5:25; Lk 13:8; 22:16; Jn 9:18) and 14 times in the LXX

Once again, inaccurate. The construction "heos hotou" occurs five times in the NT, not four.

Apparently, I did not include Luke 22:18, since that contains a textual variant. Svendsen should know, but seems quite unaware, that the total number of instances depends on which Greek manuscript one is using.

4) ‘heos'(without a couplet [sic]) is used 106 times in the NT and 1564 times in the LXX

As you might expect by now, this is, once again, inaccurate. The number of instances of heos alone-that is, without the particle (what Sungenis oddly calls a "couplet")-is 104 times in the NT and 1,454 times in the LXX.

First of all, there is nothing wrong with calling heos with the additional word a "couplet," since we are obviously dealing with two words in one phrase. Hence, Svendsen's use of sic, at this point, becomes rather sickening. However, I do thank him for alerting me to the rough breathing mark on houtou. As for our 106 as opposed to his 104, again, it is due to the textual variants of the Greek manuscripts - - something Svendsen fails to mention in any of his analysis of these Greek words. As for his 1,454, I don't know where he is getting that number, but that is inconsequential at this point, since the frequency alone is enough to cover the discrepancy. The Bible Works LXX actually says there are 1,710 uses of heos in the LXX and NT, some of the verses have two or three uses of heos, which accounts for Bible Works saying that heos appears in 1528 verses of the LXX and NT.

According to Burton's Grammar (a popular Greek Grammar used by Protestants) it states the following regarding ‘heos hou' [sic]: "In the New Testament ‘heos' is sometimes followed by ‘hou' or ‘otou' [sic]. Heos is then a preposition governing the genitive of the relative pronoun, but the phrase ‘heos hou' or ‘heos otou' [sic] is in effect a compound conjunction having the same force as the simple ‘heos'. The construction following it is also the same, except that an never occurs after ‘heos hou' or ‘heos outo' [sic]." It is clear from this Protestant Greek grammar, that there is no difference between ‘heos', ‘heos hou' or ‘heos otou' [sic]. They all have the same force and the same meaning.

Sungenis appears to think that the really important point here is that Burton is a "Protestant Greek grammar." It doesn't seem to matter to him that he has completely misunderstood Burton's point. Sungenis thinks the word "force" here is to be equated with "nuance" or "meaning," as though Burton is saying that heos hou has the same "meaning" as heos alone. Far from it. Rather, Burton (as is clear even in the quotation above-which, by the way, is §330 in Burton; Sungenis doesn't cite the reference) is referring to the part of speech heos is, with or without the particle. Since the particles hou and hotou are genitives, heos technically acts as a preposition that governs the genitive. However-and this is Burton's point-the construction heos hou or heos hotou retains the same conjunctive "force" that heos has when it occurs by itself. Burton's point is not that heos hou has the same nuance as heos alone-only that is acts as the same part of speech; namely, a conjunction. If Sungenis had spent less time gloating over the fact that he found a "Protestant" grammar (whatever that is; Greek is non-partisan), and more time attempting to understand his sources, he might have noticed that I included a detailed analysis of heos hou retaining its conjunctive force in my book on Mary.

First of all, I am not "gloating." Svendsen's deragatory remark is one of his usual attempts at making a tempest in a teapot. I simply point out the fact that Burton is a grammar used by Protestants quite frequently. Westminster Seminary where I attended, considered it one of the better grammars. It is still used today because it is one of the more better organized grammars. Second, and more importantly, Svendsen's argument is completely bogus. No one, including Burton, uses the word "force" to denote a part of speech or a grammatical form. If one wants to talk about parts of speech he refers to parsing, or some other relevant term, but not "force." When Burton wants to refer to a part of speech or grammatical form, he uses the word "construction," not "force." This is easily seen in the distinction Burton makes in #330 "...heos hotou is in effect a compound conjunction having the same FORCE as the simple heos. The CONSTRUCTION following it is also the same..."

Burton says the same thing when he compares the word achri with the heos couplets in #331: "Causes introduced by achri....have in general the same CONSTRUCTION and FORCE as clauses introduced by heos, heos hou, and heos hotou." "Force" refers to the impact a particular word or phrase has on the sentence. Since the very reason Burton is even bringing up the issue is due to the meaning of heos that he began investigating in #321-329, naturally the question would arise whether heos coupled with a particle would in anyway change the meaning of the simple heos. Burton answers that question by saying NO, the couplets have the same force as heos, no more, no less. We know this is the case by observing in the following paragraphs that Burton neither sees a necessity, nor does he even suggest that a possibility exists, that heos coupled with a particle in anyway changes the meaning. If, indeed, there was such a strong difference between heos and a heos couplet (Svendsen's assertion), we would expect a detailed grammar such as Burton's to alert us to that fact. As it stands, Burton sees no difference. And here's the rub: I don't know of any other Greek grammar who sees it, including the renowned A. T. Robertson. Svendsen's attempt to answer this deafening silence by shifting the definition of "force" from "meaning" to a "part of speech" is merely a desperate attempt to ward off contradictory evidence to his lone thesis. Again, let me stress, I don't know of ANY Greek grammar that makes the distinction between heos and its couplets that Svendsen makes, and he certainly hasn't cited any, which proves my point.

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