# in Zusammensetzungen



## Löwenfrau

I don't understand what are _Zusammensetzungen_ in this context:

"Die germanischen Sprachen besaßen ein Wort, das im Englischen von _beautiful_ verdrängt worden ist (auch _sheen_ ist veraltet, d.h. nur noch in poetischer Sprache üblich), das aber im Niederländischen und im Hochdeutschen nur zu häufig gebraucht wird: _schön_. Die Etymologie ist unsicher; das got. _skauns_ übersetzt in Zusammensetzungen das griech. _morphê_, wobei nicht zu übersehen ist, daß wir nicht wissen, ob die beiden Hauptstellen (Philip. 2, 6. 3, 21) die _Schönheit_ des verklärten Christus oder gar schon die spätere theologische _Gestalt_ meinen." Mauthner


in what kinds of compositions?

Vielen Dank im Voraus!


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## bearded

Ich denke, dass M. folgendes meint:  das got. ''skauns'' findet man in zusammengesetzten Wörtern (word compounds, e.g. Muttersprache), wo es die Übersetzung des griechischen Wortes 'morphé'' darstellt. 
'Morphé' bedeutet übrigens auf Griechisch '' Form'' oder ''schöne Form''.


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## Löwenfrau

bearded man said:


> Ich denke, dass M. folgendes meint:  das got. ''skauns'' findet man in zusammengesetzten Wörtern (word compounds, e.g. Muttersprache), wo es die Übersetzung des griechischen Wortes 'morphé'' darstellt.
> 'Morphé' bedeutet übrigens auf Griechisch '' Form'' oder ''schöne Form''.



That makes sense, but it is odd that he doesn't give any examples of compound words with "skauns", don't you think?


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## wandle

Could _Zusammensetzungen_ be parallel texts, as in this commentary by Aquinas on Philippians 2, 6 and 3, 21? 

In the former, the Greek word is _morphei_ simply; in the latter, it is the compound _summorphon_.

The former is about Christ taking human form, the latter is about _metaschematisis_, or transfiguration (change from human to heavenly form).

Mauthner's doubt about the meaning of _morphe_ may be answered by the fact that in both passages that term is treated as equivalent to _schema_, which means shape or outward appearance. In fact, the first passage says that although subsisting in divine form (_morphe_), Christ takes on the form (_morphe_) of a slave (i.e. of a human). It does not seem at all likely that Paul (assuming he wrote it) meant _morphe_ to mean beauty here. The fact that the theory of transfiguration was developed later by theologians does not alter that.


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## berndf

bearded man said:


> Ich denke, dass M. folgendes meint:  das got. ''skauns'' findet man in zusammengesetzten Wörtern (word compounds, e.g. Muttersprache), wo es die Übersetzung des griechischen Wortes 'morphé'' darstellt.
> 'Morphé' bedeutet übrigens auf Griechisch '' Form'' oder ''schöne Form''.



Yes, your understanding it absolutely right.


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## berndf

wandle said:


> In fact, the first passage says that although subsisting in divine form (_morphe_), Christ takes on the form (_morphe_) of a slave (i.e. of a human). It does not seem at all likely that Paul (assuming he wrote it) meant _morphe_ to mean beauty here. The fact that the theory of transfiguration was developed later by theologians does not alter that.


The problem is that the Gothic bible translates _morphe _only in 2.6 as _skauns _(_gudaskaunein=Gottesgestalt;_ ending could be dative or accusative):_saei in *gudaskaunein *wisands ni wulwa rahnida wisan sik galeiko guda_​In 2.7 it uses _wlit_ (_wlit skalkis=Gestalt [eines] Sklaven_):_ak sik silban uslausida, *wlit skalkis *nimands, in galeikja manne waurþans_​So, the ambiguity remains.


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## wandle

Lewis & Short place the use of _morphe_ at Phil. 2, 6 under meaning *2*: '_form, fashion or appearance_', thus distinguishing it from meaning *1*, where it may mean '_form_' or '_beauty of form_'.

In each of the Greek passages cited by Mauthner, _morphe_ is equated with the term _schema_ (once on its own, once in a compound). 
 With _schema_, the possibility of ambiguity between 'form' and 'beauty of form' does not arise.


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## bearded

Löwenfrau said:


> That makes sense, but it is odd that he doesn't give any examples of compound words with "skauns", don't you think?


Well, apparently there is at least one such  compound, as berndf has written in #6 above..


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## berndf

wandle said:


> Lewis & Short place the use of _morphe_ at Phil. 2, 6 under meaning *2*: '_form, fashion or appearance_', thus distinguishing it from meaning *1*, where it may mean '_form_' or '_beauty of form_'.
> 
> In each of the Greek passages cited by Mauthner, _morphe_ is equated with the term _schema_ (once on its own, once in a compound).
> With _schema_, the possibility of ambiguity between 'form' and 'beauty of form' does not arise.


Important as Lewis and Short's scholarly opinions are, they haven't guided the translator of the Gothic Bible 15 centuries ago who saw it fit *not *to translate _μορφὴν δούλου _as _*skalkskaunein_ (or whatever the correct word form might have been). Whether this means that he understood _μορφή _to have different meanings in 2.6 and 2.7? We don't know. 
So, the ambiguity remains. And that is Mauthners point.


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## wandle

> wir nicht wissen, ob die beiden Hauptstellen (Philip. 2, 6. 3, 21) die Schönheit des verklärten Christus oder gar schon die spätere theologische Gestalt meinen.


That statement, though, can only be a comment by Mauthner on the meaning of the Greek. He is presenting that original text as a means for a modern critic to cross-check the meaning of the Gothic Bible. That is, he is using the Greek as a reference point.

That is why it is necessary to establish the meaning of the Greek separately. In the Greek text, Mauthner claims to see an ambiguity which seems unjustified by the meaning of the words. A different ambiguity might well be present, that between form and appearance: in this case, the parallel use of _schema_ goes to confirm it rather than refute it.

Chambers English Dictionary (1990) suggests that the etymology of English 'sheen' may have been affected by 'shine'. 'Shine' of course corresponds to German _scheinen_. If that is connected to the Gothic _skauns_, then perhaps the Gothic translator intended the sense 'appearance' in contrast to 'form'. That might fit the Greek rather neatly.


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## wandle

I see DWB has the following under _schön_:


> J. Grimm vermutete zusammenhang mit scheinen kl. schr. 3, 300. 7, 273; in neuerer zeit hält man schauen für urverwandt Fick3 3, 336.


What does _*ur*verwandt_ mean? In pre-Germanic language?


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## berndf

wandle said:


> That is why it is necessary to establish the meaning of the Greek separately. In the Greek text, Mauthner claims to see an ambiguity which seems unjustified by the meaning of the words. A different ambiguity might well be present, that between form and appearance: in this case, the parallel use of _schema_ goes to confirm it rather than refute it.


Mauthner's question is if the the connotation of _beautiful_ had already entered the meaning of the Germanic word in Gothic. The mere fact that _μορφή _can have the meaning _beauty in form _and that the interpretation is justifiable in the attested translations of _μορφή _as _skauns_ (even if you don't agree and all modern scholars don't agree with it) it sufficient consider it uncertain if the Gothic word already had the later connotation of_ beauty_ or not. And that is all what Mauthner said.


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## berndf

wandle said:


> I see DWB has the following under _schön_:
> 
> What does _urverwandt_ mean? In pre-Germanic language?


Yes. The opinion of most modern etymological dictionaries is that the original meaning of PGrm. _*skaunaz_ is _visible, conspicuous_ with an obvious semanic realtion to_ schauen_. The development to mean _beautiful _may then be similar to the German word _ansehnlich_ which means _nice to look_ or _impressive to look at_ although a more literal translation would only yield _able/likely to be looked at_.


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## wandle

berndf said:


> Mauthner's question is if the the connotation of _beautiful_ had already entered the meaning of the Germanic word in Gothic. The mere fact that _μορφή _can have the meaning _beauty in form _and that the interpretation is justifiable in the attested translations of _μορφή _as _skauns_ (even if you don't agree and all modern scholars don't agree with it) it sufficient consider it uncertain if the Gothic word already had the later connotation of_ beauty_ or not. And that is all what Mauthner said.


If I understand correctly, you mean that the Gothic translator may or may not have thought a connotation of beauty was present in _morphe_, which in turn means that we cannot deduce either the presence or absence of that connotation in Gothic _skauns_.


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## berndf

wandle said:


> If I understand correctly, you mean that the Gothic translator may or may not have thought a connotation of beauty was present in _morphe_, which in turn means that we cannot deduce either the presence or absence of that connotation in Gothic _skauns_.


Yes, that is the essence of Mauther's remark ..._daß wir nicht wissen, ob die beiden Hauptstellen (Philip. 2, 6. 3, 21) die Schönheit ... meinen._


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## wandle

But Mauthner says we - that is, the moderns - do not know whether the Greek text meant the beauty of the transfigured Christ or 'already even' (_gar schon_) the later theological 'form'.

That is different from saying either that the Gothic translator did not know it, or that we cannot tell whether he knew it.

Mauthner's statement brings the alleged uncertainty into the modern age. He does not say that the Greek was ambiguous to the Gothic translator; he says it is ambiguous to us, and in a tendentious fashion: he seems to be trying to lead the reader into saying:

 'Oh well, if the idea of form is a later theological construct, then we should presumably see the connotation of beauty as the original meaning'.


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## berndf

Yes, it does exactly mean that. Allmost all we know about Gothic semantics is from that 1500 year old translation. We can therefore infer the meaning of Gothic words only from the translator's apparent interpretation of the text he translated back then. If this interpretation cannot be determined unambiguously then we are unsure about the meaning in Gothic.

Mauthner's claim is _Die Etymologie [of the Germanic word] ist unsicher_. Everything that follows is substantiation of that statement.


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## wandle

The problem is that Mauthner's statement about _morphe_ is mistaken. We do know that _morphe_ means 'form' and not 'beauty of form'.
There is no ambiguity in the Greek between those two meanings. 

He may be right to say that the etymology of _schön_ is uncertain: but his erroneous comment on _morphe_ cannot substantiate that. All it substantiates is the uncertainty of Mauthner's scholarship and method. It seems he opened the Greek lexicon, saw two meanings for _morphe_ and jumped to the conclusion that there was an ambiguity in the text of the epistle.

However, to draw such a conclusion is to make one of the most basic errors of translation: it is simply ignoring the context. The context makes clear that Paul is writing about the difference between divine nature and human nature. That is not in doubt.

This page contains a series of parallel English translations of Phil 2, 6 going back to Wycliffe (14th C). All of them show that the translators understood _morphe theou_ to mean the form of God in the sense of *the natural characteristics of God.*

This page contains a translation of the Greek and of the Latin commentary by Aquinas. He too takes _morphe_ in the same sense. At other points in the commentary, in common with his usual practice, he discusses alternative interpretations of the text which he then refutes. However, he does not do this in relation to the phrase _morphe theou_. That indicates that he was not aware of any competing interpretations of this phrase which it would be necessary to refute.

Here is Aquinas' comment on this phrase:


> He says, therefore: _who_, namely, Christ, _though he was in the form of God_. For it is through its form that a thing is said to be in a specific or generic nature; hence the form is called the nature of a thing. Consequently, *to be in the form of God is to be in the nature of God.*


Compare with that the following comment by Luther:


> The term “form of God” here does not mean the “essence of God” because Christ never emptied himself of this.  Neither can the phrase “form of a servant” be said to mean “human essence.”  But the “form of God” is wisdom, power, righteousness, goodness—and freedom too; for Christ was a free, powerful, wise man, subject to none of the vices or sins to which all other men are subject.  *He was pre-eminent in such attributes as are particularly proper to the form of God.*



Where that definer of Catholic orthodoxy and that champion of Protestant integrity both agree on the interpretation, there is little room for doubt and certainly no call for Mauthner to invent an anachronistic and non-existent ambiguity.


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## berndf

No, it is not a problem as the "correct" meaning of morphe in this Bible passage is completely irrelevant to Mauthner's argument. All that matters is that the meaning "beauty in form" exists and that this meaning can plausibly have occurred to a translator who lived many centuries before any of those source you cited were written. The fact that the translator words in 2.6 and 2.7 to represent morphe reinforces the suspicion that he saw a semantic difference. That is completely sufficient for Mauthner's argument. Again, this passage is about the Gothic and not about the Greek word. The only interest whatsoever he has in the Greek word is in helping us to derive the range of meanings of the Gothic word. And there he concludes that the very few cases where morphe has been translated as skauns and only in combined words are inconclusive to reconstruct this range of meanings.

Besides, you may disagree with Mauthner's conclusions. But that is also irrelevant for understanding what Mauthner meant and only that matters in this thread.


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## wandle

berndf said:


> All that matters is that the meaning "beauty in form" exists and that this meaning can plausibly have occurred to a translator who lived many centuries before any of those source you cited were written.


That is precisely what is not plausible. It is very clear that Paul does not mean 'beauty of form'. 
For that meaning to be relevant to Mauthner's point, more is necessary than that it should have occurred to the translator.
It may have occurred to him, but if so, we are justified, by the fact that the context is clearly about the divine nature, in concluding that the Gothic translator, in common with everyone else, would have dismissed the possibility that _morphe_ meant beauty of form. 

It is so obvious that it does not mean that, that it is only by a schoolboy error that anyone could come to that view.
It is not in accord with critical method to start from the assumption that the Gothic translator was incompetent to that degree.

We ought to assume, unless there is evidence to the contrary, that he had a reasonable level of competence in Greek.
On that basis, we can safely say that he would not have entertained the idea that _morphe_ meant beauty of form.


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## berndf

Sorry, it is not so obvious to Mauthner nor is it to me that Bishop Ulfas or whoever translated this passage in the 4th century must have thought like you. But again, whether Mauthner is right or not is beside the point. All  what matters here is what Mauthner meant and not whether he is right.


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## wandle

Mauthner first says (a) that the etymology of _schön_ is uncertain. Very well, that is a question of Germanic philology. I daresay he is right.

Then he says we ought to bear in mind (b) that *we* (the moderns) do not know whether _morphe_ - rendered in compounds by Gothic _skauns_ - has in the two key passages Phil 2, 6 and 3, 21 the meaning 'beauty of the transfigured Christ' or (even so early) the later theological concept of form. 

This is a question of *our* (the moderns') interpretation of New Testament Greek. Here he seems quite mistaken in his reading of the Greek and his phrasing ('or (even so early) the later theological concept of form') seems very tendentious, aiming to influence the reader towards an unscholarly view of the text.

In other words, it seems that Mauthner is inserting this comment not as a contribution to Germanic philology, since (as you point out) it adds nothing on that score, but to influence the reader towards his own ungrounded view of the NT.  He is apparently slipping in a personal opinion on religion under the guise of philology.

He wants us to think that 'beauty of the transfigured Christ' could be seen as a possible meaning of _morphe_. Several different factors make against this.

(1) Phil 2, 6 is not about the Transfiguration at all. It is dealing with the Incarnation, the taking on of human nature by Christ. It is about the entry of the divine nature into the human sphere. This obviously belongs at the beginning of Christ's earthly life, whereas the Transfiguration belongs at the end of it and represents the reverse movement: that of the human body and nature into the divine sphere. Mauthner's idea is thus in Christological terms both anachronistic and illogical.

(2) In both passages, the concept of _morphe_ is paralleled with that of _schema_. The word _schema_ cannot bear the connotation 'beauty of form'. Thus the parallelism of these terms shows us on linguistic grounds that, in this context, _morphe_ is not being used with the connotation 'beauty of form'.

(3) The consistent theological interpretation of _morphe theou_ shown by the agreement of translators and commentators is that it refers to the characteristics of the divine nature and is contrasted with the term _morphe doulou_, referring to the characteristics of human nature. That is the same theological view I was taught in my younger days. I have not heard of any other.


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## berndf

wandle said:


> Here he seems quite mistaken...


If he is mistaken or not is not relevant for understanding what he meant and therefore off-topic.


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## Löwenfrau

> ... daß wir nicht wissen, ob die beiden Hauptstellen (Philip. 2, 6. 3, 21) die _Schönheit des verklärten Christus oder gar schon die spätere theologische Gestalt meinen._



Without even questioning if Mauthner is right or wrong (as berndf stressed that is not the point), I'd just like to check if my rendition of the sentence as a whole is appropriate.

... that we don't know whether both passages (Philip. 2, 6. 3, 21) mean the beauty of the transfigured Christ or even (already) the late theologian form [could it be _figure_?]


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## wandle

My suggestion:
_we do not know whether the two key passages, Phil 2, 6 and 3, 21, have the meaning 'beauty of the transfigured Christ' or (even so early) the later theological concept of 'form'. _

Incidentally, it seems the translator was Bishop Ulfilas, who was an Arian missionary to some of the Gothic tribes. It seems he may have been half Greek, half Goth, and fluent in both Greek and Latin. At any rate, he was involved in the Arian controversy and was trusted by the Arian leader, Bishop Eusebius of Nicomedia, to spread the word in the north. This must mean that he was well able to understand the text of Paul's epistles and debate the issues. There was as far as I know no dispute over the meaning of the present passage.


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## berndf

Löwenfrau said:


> ... that we don't know  whether both passages (Philip. 2, 6. 3, 21) mean the beauty of the  transfigured Christ or even (already) the late theologian form [could it  be _figure_?]


I'd say: ... that we don't know whether *the two main* passages  (Philip. 2, 6. 3, 21) mean the beauty of the transfigured Christ or even already the late theologi*cal gestalt*.

Explanation for the changes:
* You didn't translate the "Haupt" in _Hauptstellen_.
* The "already" is necessary to render the "schon" (Therefore, no parentheses around it).
* A _theologian_ is a person who does theology, the adjective is _theological_.
* The German word _Gestalt_, at least not in this meaning, is usually left untranslated.


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## wandle

I think the term 'form' is so well established in the philosophical and theological traditions that it would be odd to use 'Gestalt' in English. 
'Gestalt' is used in English in the context of Gestalt psychology, which is certainly a later development (unlike 'form', which was already in Ulfilas' day an old familiar concept in religious and philosophical discussion, though with various meanings).


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## berndf

wandle said:


> I think the term 'form' is so well established in the philosophical and theological traditions that it would be odd to use 'Gestalt' in English.


If you are happy with _form_ in this context than I am too. I wan''t quite sure it conveyed all the necessary connotations.


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## Löwenfrau

> * You didn't translate the "Haupt" in _Hauptstellen.
> * The "already" is necessary to render the "schon" (Therefore, no parentheses around it)._


You are right, my mistake, I did that in the Portuguese version.

Many thanks to you all!


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