As we have seen, Burton is in full agreement that heos and heos hou not only serve the same function, but both limit and continue the action of the verb. Svendsen's appeal to the translation "while" does nothing to alter this basic fact.

Throughout this article I have called attention to several very basic errors in Sungenis' presentation that are difficult to explain given that the writer claims to know Greek. The errors include:

Heos hou and heos hotou are variant forms of the same particle and are treated as such by grammarians. Yet Sungenis separates them as though they are of two different classes. It is one thing to separate them for the purpose of enumerating their instances; quite another to leave them separated in your conclusions (e.g., Sungenis never demonstrates that he knows heos hou and heos hotou are in a different class than heos an). That leads me to believe that the writer is unfamiliar with the relationships of Greek particles.

I don't have to mention the different "classes" because nothing we are speaking about requires that I do so. Moreover, I covered heos an because there are textual variants that replace heos hou with heos an. For example, in Mt 26:36, Codices B, 067 have heos hou; Codices D, K, L, W, Delta, Theta, 074 contain heos an; Codices Aleph, C, 28, 33 simply have heos; and Codex A and Papyrus 53 have heos hou an.

Not only does this show us that the Greek transcribers saw no difference between heos and heos hou in regards to continuing the action of the verb (otherwise they would not have replaced one with the other), but it also shows that ALL the heos conjunctive forms are interchangeable. This puts a gapping hole in Svendsen's thesis.

Sungenis consistently-in both his quotations of Burton and his own reflection- transliterates heos hotou as heos otou, ignoring the rough breathing mark on hotou. This is an error so basic that it could be spotted by someone with a week's worth of Greek training. It would be easy to overlook a mere typo; and if that were all it was there would be little need to point it out. But Sungenis' transliteration is consistently wrong, and he never once gets it right. That leads me to believe that the writer doesn't know even basic Greek.

Now we know why Jesus told the Pharisees that they strain the gnat and swallow the camel.

Sungenis seems to be unfamiliar with the language of Greek grammar, referring to the grammatical construction as "heos with the couplet," rather than heos with the particle. The research betrays the work of a novice rather than someone steeped in current NT and Greek studies.

I leave the reader to judge Svendsen's picayune remarks. To me, all it shows is someone who so desperate to disparage his critic that he has to start grasping at any straw he can. As I explained above, I use the word "couplet" because the heos conjunctions, except for heos, come in pair words. Very simple. A child could understand it, but Svendsen, blinded by his own hatred for the Catholic Church, remains as obtuse as ever.

Sungenis is consistently wrong on the number of instances for each construction cited. I know exactly why he is wrong in most cases. It is because he has counted the wrong thing. He has counted the passages where the construction occurs instead of the instances in which they occur. Some passages contain two instances of the same construction; yet this has passed Sungenis' notice, and in the process, we are again treated to a sampling of the quality of the research in which CAI engages.

No, it didn't pass my notice, since I have the same Bible software Svendsen does. I explained this above.

Sungenis' over-reliance on grammars to establish a rule that can be established only by a careful examination of every instance in its context and in its literary era, shows that he has not received sufficient training in exegesis and Greek grammatical research methods to weigh in on this discussion. Perhaps he received the training during his time at Westminster; but his current practice betrays a woeful misunderstanding of the genre of grammatical studies. Grammatical rules are established by usage.

"Over reliance on grammars"?? Hardly. The whole world depends on Greek grammars. But Eric Svendsen? Oh, he's a different case. He apparently has knowledge about heos hou that no one in all of Greek historical analysis has ever seen, and he claims to get this by an exhaustive research into all the uses of heos hou. As I have shown above, his whole premise of "semantic range" is misapplied and unproven in regards to heos hou. He misses the instances in the NT where heos hou continues the action. He misses the equal proportion in the LXX and NT of heos hou which continues the action. He misses the textual variants that either put doubt into or disprove his thesis. He misapplies and misinterprets the English translation "while." He misses the fact that Burton not only admits that heos continues the action, but he cites 5 Greek grammars on classical literature that say the same. In short, Svendsen simply is not up to the task.

When it can be shown that a particular Greek construction always denotes x in a literary timeframe, taking into account all the literature used in that era and finding no exceptions, that establishes a "rule" of usage. For instance, if I am Granville Sharp, and I want to see if there is any significance to the construction of two nouns governed by the same article and separated by kai ("and"), I would simply do a search on that grammatical construction, examine every instance of it, and observe whether there is some common denominator, or pattern of usage that ties them all together. As it turns out, there is indeed a pattern of usage for Granville Sharp's rule (though not the popularized version of it). That is just what I have done in my research of heos hou in the NT era. This is how grammatical studies are done. They are not done by running to the oldest grammar one can find and carelessly pulling tendentious excerpts from it that end up not even addressing the issue at hand.

More of his ingratiating rhetoric. Analysis is wonderful, but there is one thing Svendsen fails to tell his audience. The analysis is only as good as the person doing the analysis. Svendsen already proved this for us by citing the discrepancy in the Granville Sharp rule. Those who created the Granville Sharp rule apparently have a different understanding of it than Svendsen does. So who is right? Well, of course, Svendsen thinks he is right. If you don't believe so, then reread Svendsen's rhetoric about how he's discovered all the things that everyone else in the world has missed. You would think that not finding anyone in the world of Greek grammar who has ever stated that heos and heos hou can have different meanings would make Svendsen think twice before asserting it. But no, Svendsen actually uses the absence of witnesses in order to place himself as the only one in all of history to discover this supposed nuance of Greek grammar.

My question is, Who conducted the research that underlies this article? Was it Sungenis' "helping hand," or was it the work of his under-qualified assistant whose work he promised to check? If it was Sungenis, then I confess I have been giving him much more credit than he deserves, so basic are some of the errors in his article. If it was his assistant, then my predication about his abilities has been realized, and Sungenis is relying uncritically on the research of someone who is in way over his head. Either way, it is a fair indicator of what we can expect when the final version of the Queenship publication is eventually released.

Eric Svendsen, Ph.D.

All I can say is: "Thank you, Eric Svendsen, Ph.D. You have made our effort in refuting you in our book that much easier by exposing your weak arguments. Please feel free to give us more of them, since we would like to make our book the strongest it could possibly be."

Robert Sungenis, M.A. Ph.D (cand)
Catholic Apologetics International
August 1, 2002

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