No, this is also incorrect. Access to all the biblical passages of a particular Greek word or phrase were available for the old grammars and the new. If the grammars, such as Burton's, don't cite all the instances that is because they don't need to, since doing so would be redundant. More importantly, surely Burton, and all the other grammars, knew of all the instances of heos hou in the New Testament. There aren't that many of them to investigate - less than two dozen. Surely if there was a distinction between heos hou and heos an expert grammarian like Burton, or anyone else of his caliber, would be able to discover those difference quite easily. As it stands, NONE of them saw a difference, even though they had all the instances of heos hou at their fingertips. Burton did not need Logos or BibleWorks software to locate heos hou. Yet Svendsen, in his utter desperation to protect his thesis, has no choice but to call into question these traditionally authoritative sources, otherwise his dissertation falls like a house of cards, at least on the issue of heos hou.

Even a hard and fast rule such as Colwell's rule regarding anarthrous predicate nouns has been extensively modified due to more recent, computer-aided scholarship.

Colwell's rule was not even fully accepted by the old grammars. Even Colwell knew his theory had holes in it, since the Greek article has escaped all attempts to pigeonhole it into one's pet category. Modern software has not cracked the code of the infamous Greek article. Even Wallace's treatment of the article is not altogether satisfactory.

It would be only a slight exaggeration to say that older rules are being overturned daily by new studies in this area. Sungenis is relying on works that predate the very ability to look at every instance of these Greek constructions, so numerous are they.

As I said above, Burton and company had access to all the uses of heos hou. As we can tell by the analytical lexicons and concordances that his generation of exegetes produced, none of the instances of these phrases would have been a surprise to them. Even according to Svendsen's own calculations, there are only 102 instances of heos hou in both the LXX and the New Testament. Using a mere concordance, one could look up all 17 instances in the New Testament, and analyze them, in about the space of two hours. The 85 remaining in the LXX may take a week. But Svendsen acts as if all this knowledge is hidden away somewhere in secret chambers to which only the sophisticated computer geeks, such as himself, have access. Svendsen's whole thesis is built on a house of cards, and as we will see, it doesn't take much wind to blow it away.

What's worse is that such an appeal to Burton-who wrote his grammar over 100 years ago-betrays that Sungenis has not kept up with current NT research methods in Greek grammatical studies. Does he have anything to contribute from this century? Burton-and any other antiquated grammar for that matter-needs to be supplemented by more recent and more extensive Greek studies. To illustrate my point further, the very first paragraph in that section of Burton's grammar states the following:

321. "Heos is properly a relative adverb which marks one action as the temporal limit of another action. It does this in two ways, either (a) so that the beginning or simple occurrence of the action of the verb introduced by heos is the limit of the action denoted by the principal verb [such is the case in Matt 1:25], or (b) so that the continuance of the former is the limit of the latter [e.g., John 9:4]. In the former case heos means until, in the latter, while, as long as."

One wonders why Sungenis didn't rather cite or refer to this paragraph, since it is really the only paragraph in that section that deals specifically with the meaning of heos. Here Burton states that there are two basic meanings of heos: (a) "until" (which, according to Burton, limits the action of the main clause to the time denoted by the action of the subordinate clause; and (b) "while" (which, according to Burton, shows contemporaneous action). Matt 1:25 falls under Burton's category (a) "until," and certainly not category (b) "while, as long as." Burton doesn't cite any instance in which heos means "while" and implies continuation of the main clause.

This is a simple case of Svendsen not understanding what he is reading. The use of heos limiting the action of the main verb is covered in Burton's section "a." The meaning of heos continuing the action of the main verb is addressed in Burton's section "b." It just so happens that heos, when it continues the action of the main verb, is sometimes better translated as "while" or "as long as," rather than "until." The LXX translations into English do the same thing with heos. Depending on the context, the meaning of heos will shift between the two possibilities. The fact that heos continues the action of the main verb cannot be dismissed by claiming that heos can sometimes be translated "while" in English. There are many instances, in both the LXX and the NT, in which translating by using "while" or an "until" that is meant to continue the action is a mere judgment call on the part of the translator. In any case, the translation "while" merely shows that heos continues the action of the main verb rather than limiting it. This is evidence against Svendsen's thesis, not for it. Accordingly, when Burton then says in paragraph 330 that heos; heos hotou; heos hou have the same "force," he means that, just like heos, the phrases heos hotou and heos hou will shift between terminating the action of the main verb or continuing the action, depending on the context. It's really very simple.

The only way Svendsen can vindicate himself is by making Burton look like an inept Greek grammarian. The mere fact that in paragraph 321, Burton also cites the use of heos in the classics, such as Hadley's Greek Grammar; Goodwin's Greek grammar; and the Journal of Biblical Literature, and thus he is familiar with the uses of heos in the LXX, and none of those grammars say that heos can only terminate the action of the main verb.

Sungenis could have made a better case for himself by referring to my book, rather than to Burton, since I allow that heos does sometimes imply continuation. As it is, the use of Burton actually militates against Sungenis, providing what amounts to no support for his view of Matt 1:25, and, indeed, some evidence to the contrary.

As noted above, Svendsen has misconstrued what Burton is saying.

If I were as zealous as Sungenis to find contrived support from my view, I'm certain I could score many points simply by foregoing any mention of the fact the grammars are general treatments only, and are not to be used in the unqualified way Sungenis uses them-namely, without being supplemented by extended studies on specific grammatical constructions. I could have done this as well; but honesty in scholarship compels me to concede a point that might help Sungenis' case, but that Burton does not mention; namely, that heos, when it occurs alone or with the particle an, can indeed be used to show no reference to continuation or termination of the main clause by the action of the subordinate clause. Again, if Sungenis had just read my book, he would have found evidence more favorable to his own position than Burton offers. The fact that he prefers to misread Burton indicates in my mind that he is interested only in an "appearance" of evidence for his view, and not in dealing with his sources in a fair and evenhanded way.

In addition to what I said above, I appealed to Burton only to show that heos hou has the same "force" as heos. It is Svendsen who is accusing Burton and the other grammars of not knowing that heos can continue an action as opposed to terminating it.

The only other contingency here is the use of ‘heos an'. This is a special case in Greek. When the clause introduced by heos depends on a verb of future time, and refers to a future contingency, it takes the Subjunctive mood with the use of ‘an', both in classical and New Testament Greek (Mt 5:18). Sungenis is no doubt relying on Burton's § 322 for this, but again fails to cite Burton, writing instead as though this were his own thought.

Apparently Svendsen is on a ‘search and destroy' mission, trying to make it look like I am plagiarizing Burton when I am not. This is another attempt of his to agitate the atmosphere of this discussion. If I was plagerizing Burton, then how did Svendsen know that I was quoting from Burton? The answer is easy, at least for someone without an axe to grind - - I already stated I was getting the information from Burton in my opening remarks.

However, in the process Sungenis fails to recognize that Burton's intended observation is one of mere grammatical form rather than meaning. Burton's intent is simply not what Sungenis hopes to get out of it. That task is left to others who, having a much greater advantage over Burton (who wrote over a century ago), and using more recent, computer-aided research, have spotted grammatical idiosyncrasies that Burton has missed (partly due to the general nature of grammars, and partly due to the inability to find all instances of a construction in days of old). In-depth research on even one grammatical construction can take years-and there are virtually endless possibilities for grammatical constructions. The point is, no one grammarian is going to catch them all-such would be an impossibly daunting task.

Here is a rehash of Svendsen's bogus argument that "force" does not refer to "meaning" but to a "part of speech." As for the issue of grammatical searches, as I said above, Svendsen is trying to make these past grammarians look like incompetent boobs in an effort to support his own biases. He's trying to convince us that of all the grammarians of past years, no one had ever noticed, as Svendsen has noticed, the difference in meaning between heos and heos hou. This just simply passed by all of them unawares, as brilliant as some of them were. If you believe that, then I've got some Florida swamp land I want to sell you.

As an example of this, when I attended D. A. Carson's Advanced Greek Grammar class many years ago, I was assigned the grammatical construction "the infinitive + eis + the anarthrous accusative noun." Carson gave me an A- on the paper and made the paper required reading for the rest of the class, largely because I had uncovered a nuance for that construction that bears on the interpretation of Heb 6:6 ("to renew them to repentance"). But what grammarian of old would have thought-or even have the ability-to compare every instance of the infinitive + eis + the anarthrous accusative noun? The point, again, is that there are endless possibilities for researching grammatical constructions-and most of these are spurred on by a personal exegetical study of a particular biblical text-so it should come as no surprise to anyone that older scholarship, who did not have computer-aided research, would simply not be able to uncover all possible nuances of all possible constructions.

First of all, we're not talking about complicated constructions such as "infinitive + eis + the anarthrous accusative noun." We are talking about heos as opposed to heos hou, a very simple comparison. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to compare one against the other, especially since the investigator only has two possible outcomes, that is, either heos and heos hou continue the action of the main verb or they do not Second, and this is as an aside, the meaning of "infinitive + eis + the anarthrous accusative noun" is dependent on the interpretation of the one doing the analysis. If he comes in with a bias, as Svendsen invariably does, then it will corrupt the actual meaning (and that is assuming that there is some special meaning to the "infinitive + eis + the anarthrous accusative noun"). There is no standard Greek grammar dropped from heaven that gives us the meaning of "infinitive + eis + the anarthrous accusative noun." The meaning, if it can be reached, is reached by trial and error, and even then we may not know for sure. Greek grammarians, as I noted above, haven't even unlocked all the nuances of the Greek article. Third, appeal to the complexity of the Greek grammar actually weakens Svendsen's case, since one would be forced to ask: "If its so complicated, Dr. Svendsen, then how can you be so sure about your conclusions regarding heos hou? If Dr. Svendsen retorts that it is simple in the case of heos hou, then we can ask: "then why bother us with all this "infinitive + eis + the anarthrous accusative noun" matter?

Indeed, in many cases, inquiries were (in past times) limited to biblical literature, with little thought that further research on the same construction in all available Hellenistic literature of that era (such a task must have seemed mind-boggling to pre-GramCord grammarians!) might yield even greater nuances of the construction in question. And indeed, this is just what has happened in countless instances in which long-established grammatical "rules" have, in more recent times, easily been overturned. Sungenis writes his article(s) as though he is completely unaware of this fact.

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