Nearly fifteen years ago, when Carson wrote Exegetical Fallacies, even then he was able to point out many examples where computer-aided research had already begun to overturn earlier established works. One of the fallacies he addresses in his book is the fallacy of semantic obsolescence. This occurs when one finds a word or phrase in an older writing (such as the LXX) and attempts to superimpose the meaning of that word or phrase onto a later writing (such as the NT). It was a common practice in older grammars to find the various nuances of a word in both Testaments and combine them into an acceptable semantic range for that word. In more recent times, scholars have rejected that approach because it commits the fallacy of semantic obsolescence. It is a much more sound practice to determine what a word or phrase means in the era in which it is written. If that word or phrase is a NT word or phrase, then one begins by looking at its nuances in the NT and the surrounding Hellenistic literature to see how it was used by the normal Greek speaker of the writer's day. That becomes the semantic range for that word or phrase for that era. If one wants to discover the etymology (evolution) of the word or phrase, then it is valuable to look at how it was used in the LXX and the other literature of that era. Note well, however, that finding instances of the word or phrase in that literature does not constitute a semantic range for that word or phrase in all eras. All it does is show how the etymology of the word or phrase took place. Again, Sungenis appears to be blissfully unaware of all this. He informs the questioner above that Genesis 26:13 is a fair example of heos hou to establish the semantic range of heos hou in the NT, and consequently the meaning of Matthew 1:25. Such a statement is grossly irresponsible, and it betrays an inexcusable ignorance of how grammatical studies and exegesis are done. There are indeed some words that are Hebraisms-that is, the consistent meaning of a word or phrase in the LXX may be adopted by the NT writers due to influence by that literature. However, heos hou is not one of them. A true Hebraism is a word with a specialized meaning that permeates the LXX, and is also clearly found in the NT.

"Blissfully unaware"? No, sir. I am fully aware of the issues Svendsen describes above. I went to Protestant seminary, too, remember? I also read Carson's books (and by the way, even though he wrote a book on Exegetical Fallacies, he has his own fallacies he needs to work on, but I won't get into that right now). Here's the problem with Svendsen's argument. He thinks that just because some LXX words had developed a different shade of meaning (as all languages commonly do), he now thinks he has the license to apply this difference to whatever words he arbitrarily chooses. He has no proof that heos hou changed its meaning from heos, and he has no Greek grammarians to back him up. And we've already seen Svendsen's failure to address the issue of textual variants; as well as his arbitrary dismissal of heos on the basis that it is sometimes translated "while." And there are more problems, as I will show below.

While we are on the subject of textual variants, I think it is rather revealing that one of the most important pieces of evidence in this whole discussion Svendsen never mentions, that is, the fact that the very verse we are debating, Matthew 1:25, has a textual variant regarding heos hou. According to the Nestle Aland Greek text (the standard in the industry), one major manuscript, Codex Vaticanus (B) omits hou. It only has heos. In fact, it is very significant that heos and its couplets have a proportionately high frequency of textual variants compared to other adverbs and particles in the NT. All of this weakens Svendsen's argument considerably, but we don't hear a word from him about this important matter.

Speaking of Carson, he calls what Svendsen is doing "Appeal to Selective Evidence" on page 98 of Exegetical Fallacies. He writes: "...but also as an instance where there has been so selective a use of evidence that other evidence has been illegitimately excluded." Or we might better characterize Svendsen's error as "assuming the part equals the whole." In any case, as one can easily see, Svendsen is much too ingratiating towards his own abilities and exegetical prowess; and he is often unaware of his own exegetical fallacies. In other words, Svendsen's argument regarding semantic domain holds no weight, since he hasn't proven that heos and heos hou fit into that semantic category, and, in fact, he has no way of proving that they do, as we will see below.

Not only are there precious few instances of heos hou that bear the meaning Sungenis proposes for Matt 1:25, even in the LXX, but there is not even one clear instance of that meaning for this construction in the NT itself. That automatically disqualifies it as a Hebraism.

Let's examine the record. As for the LXX, the following are some of the instances where heos hou continues the action of the main verb. (e.g., Gn 26:13; 2Kg 6:25; 1Ch 6:32; 2Ch 21:15; 29:28; Ps 56:2 (57:1); 71:7 (72:7); 93:14,15 (94:13,15); 111:8 (112:8); 141:8 (142:7)). Although the New Testament doesn't have as many, that is only because, on a per capita basis, there are proportionately less instances of heos hou in the NT as opposed to the LXX. The NT passages in which heos hou continues the action of the main verb are Mt 14:22; 26:36; 2Pt 1:19. Of these, only Mt 26:36 has a textual variant, as I noted above.

Regarding Mt 14:22 as a primary example, here we have an instance in which heos hou, as it continues the action of the infinitive proagein ("to go before"), can either be translated "while" or "until." In fact three Greek interlinears I checked all translate it as "until" (The Revised Standard Interlinear by Alfred Marshall; The King James Inerlinear by Alfred Marshall; and The King James Interlinear by George Ricker Berry). Moreover, various English translations render the phrase as "until" or "till" (The American Standard Verions, 1901; The Douay-Rheims; The Darby Bible; and Youngs Translation).

I will address Matthew 26:36 below, since it presents even more problems for Svendsen.

The bottom line in determining what heos hou really means-and just as significantly, when it means that-is to examine every instance of the construction in the era in which you want to establish a semantic range. When we do this for heos hou in Matt 1:25, the overwhelming evidence is that the normal Greek speaker of Matthew's day would have understood Matthew to imply that Mary and Joseph engaged in normal marital relations after the birth of Jesus.

Correction: "In the normal understanding of Protestant exegesis, which ignores the Patristic and Conciliar determination of what meaning of heos hou is to be adopted in reference to Matthew 1:25, the meaning which terminates the action is chosen because it is the only one which supports the Protestant contention that Jesus had blood siblings." That such is the case, Svendsen has inadvertently admitted, for once he admits that heos hou CAN have the meaning of continuing the action of the verb, then he simply has no basis for disclaiming that possibility for Matthew 1:25, unless he can prove, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that heos hou, in the NT, cannot continue the action. As we have seen above, Svenden's "proof" is anything but.

Or, when the clause introduce [sic] by heos depends on a verb of past time and refers to what was at the time of the principal verb conceived of as a future contingency, it takes the Subjunctive mood without an in the New Testament (eg., Mt 18:30).

Sungenis has lifted this right out of § 324 of Burton, but nowhere gives him credit for it, or even indicates that it is not his. More importantly for our purposes, Sungenis continues to cite Burton even though the points are completely irrelevant to the discussion of the meaning of heos hou in Matt 1:25.

There he goes again!

Lastly, no determination of the meaning of ‘heos', ‘heos hou', ‘ heos otou' [sic] , or heos an can be made without the context of the passage being involved. As ‘heos' can be used either to terminate or to continue the action of the main verb (as its linguistic equivalent "until" does in English and many other languages, including Hebrew), so does ‘heos hou', ‘heos otou' [sic] or ‘heos an'.

If Sungenis is using the word "continue" as Burton uses it, then he fails to make his point. What Burton means by "continue" is that heos can sometimes mean "while, so long as." He doesn't use it in connection with a distinction in the nuances of heos when it means "until"-indeed, Burton doesn't so much as mention that there even is such a nuance (although there certainly is, as Sungenis would be quick to assert, and I would be just as quick to concede), precisely because that is not Burton's purpose.

Burton has already admitted that heos does not merely "limit" the action of the main verb, but also continues it. It makes little difference whether we translate the continuation by "while" or some other term, as I have shown above from Mt 14:26. The context, and other factors, will help us determine which English translation is the best, but in any case, heos hou is not LIMITING the action in Mt 14:26. The point remains that heos continues the action of the main verb, and that fact is uncontroverted by Burton.

However, that nuance extends to the construction heos hou in the LXX only. Due to semantic obsolescence, it is a grammatical fact that there is not even one instance in which heos hou or heos hotou bears a "continuation" nuance (when it means "until") in the NT or in the contemporaneous Hellenistic literature of that era. The semantic range for heos hou in that era excludes the "continuance" nuance that the construction bore in earlier times.

Obviously, one can see that Svendsen has built his whole argument around his concept of "semantic range," but as I have shown, he has not proven that heos hou fits into the arbitrary category he has created for himself. The meaning he assigns to heos hou is solely dependent on his biased examination of the evidence. As we have seen, since he misconstrues the English translation "while" as discounting the meaning of heos which continues the action of the verb rather than terminate it, one can easily see that Svendsen's "semantic range" is a totally bogus argument.

Of the above references, ‘heos', ‘heos hou', ‘heos otou' [sic], and heos an are used a total of 1,900 times in LXX and NT Greek.

Again, inaccurate. Heos in all its forms occurs only 1,710 times in the LXX and the NT; 1,564 times in the LXX and 146 times in the NT.

I've already discussed these discrepancies above.

Although the preponderance of these usages are clearly designed to terminate the action of the main verb, in a significant number of cases, heos and its associated conjunctions is clearly designed to continue the action of the main verb. In the case of heos hou, there are approximately seven or eight instances out of eighty-five (in the LXX), zero instances out of seventeen (in the NT), and zero instances out of approximately fifty (in all non-biblical literature between 100 B.C. and A.D. 100) that conform to this usage. If one can call that "a significant number," then I think anything could be included in that category.

As I have shown, there are at least three instances in the New Testament. Out of 17 occurrences, that is 18%. Since I count 11 instances in the LXX (as opposed to Svendsen's 8), then there are about 14% of cases in which heos hou continues the action of the verb in the LXX. Thus, the 18% we find in the New Testament is very close to the 14% we find in the LXX, and thus the proportions are about what we would expect if no change occurred in the meaning of heos hou.

The decision on whether heos terminates or continues the action of the main verb depends on several factors, e.g., whether one or the other makes logical sense; agrees with the context; agrees with the grammatical construction of the passage; does not contradict other known facts; etc.

I suspect the clause "does not contradict other known facts" has likely been introduced as a blank check to fill in "as needed" things such as the anachronistic testimony of Jerome vs. Helvidius. I somehow doubt that the "other known facts" will include things like the NT writers' mention of the adelphos ("brothers") and adelphe (sisters") of Jesus-a word that is never used in NT times to refer to biological relatives outside of biological siblings;

Svendsen has already given us a "blank check" by admitting that both heos and heos hou can continue the action of the verb. His attempt to limit this admission by an appeal to "semantic range," has not been proven. As for adelphos, it is used over 400 times in the NT. It its literal sense, it can refer to an immediate family member; a near or distant relative; or even a neighbor (cf., Mt 5:47). The NT has a liberal use of "brothers" in various contexts, and in various instances distinguishes a blood relative or tribal neighbor from a sibling. Even in instances where it is often assumed that "brother" refers to a sibling, this may not be the case. For example, Peter and Andrew are referred to as "brothers" (cf., Mt 4:18; 10:2; Mk 1:16; Lk 6:14; Jn 1:40; 6:8) but this may refer to the tribal sense of the word. Without other evidence to the contrary, there is no way to disprove this possibility. The possibility is heightened by the fact that (a) Peter is the only one of the two who is designated as the "son of Jonah" (Mt 16:17), and (b) James and John, in the same context, are both specified as having Zebedee as their father (cf., Mt 4:21; 20:20; 26:37; Mk 10:35; Lk 5:10). Another case concerns the "brothers" of Jesus. Jn 7:5 states that Jesus' "brothers" did not believe in Him. Yet Ac 1:14 indicates that Jesus' "brothers" were praying with Mary and the Apostles in the upper room. Unless all of these "brothers" experienced a dramatic conversion from the time of John 7 (which took place six months prior to Jesus' final Passover) to Ac 1:14, which was fifty days after Jesus' resurrection, then they are not speaking of the same group of men. Not only is the time constraint make a conversion unlikely, but since the NT gives no evidence that all, or even some, of the "brothers" of John 7 converted, the evidence leans against assuming so.

The OT equivalent to adelphos is ach. It also has a wide range of meaning. Although in a preponderance of passages ach refers to a brother from the same immediate family (e.g., Ex 28:1, 2, 4; Dt 13:6; 25:5), in a significant number of places it refers to a near relative, or sometimes even a distant relative, including a cousin or uncle, and even friends or allies. Only the context of the passage will show which meaning is in view. For example, Lot is called Abraham's "brother," although from the context it is known that he was his nephew (Gn 14:12-14); Laban calls himself Jacob's "brother," although he was a brother-in-law (Gn 29:15); the cousins of the daughters of Eleazar are called "brothers" (1Ch 23:21-22). "Brothers" of a man can come in multitudes of "three-thousand" (1Ch 12:29); "one hundred twenty" (1Ch 15:5-6); and "seventy" (Jg 9:5).

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