@Davïd Thanks, I think that confirms my guess that it's kind of niche. I've weighed in on meta but basically said the same think as Dan I think.

@Davïd Thank you for this - I didn't even know there was such a thing as dual in Greek.

I'm confused, though, because the link seems to refer to substantives, but the answer is referring to a verb?

An infinitive, no less.

Is that a mistake and he meant "ἡμῖν is plural, not dual," rather than πληρῶσαι? (Not your problem at all, but you got involved...)

@Susan Ha! Well, that'll larn me to stick my nose in where it don't belong! ;^)

@Susan Basically I was trying to be helpful and lazy at the same time. Smyth has 11 paragraphs that discuss/mention the "dual", and I stuck in the one that looked (at first blush) like the closest match for the discussion. (That link takes a long time to load, btw - do be patient with it!)

@Susan When that Perseus link loads, you'll see a "More(10)" toggle in the heading to the hits - click that and you'll get the lot. (Which you knew, I'm sure -- but just in case!).

@Davïd But there is actually such a thing as (Greek) dual verbs? (Link is still loading....) Infinitives?!

@Susan Yeah, well ... I dunno. :D Check out the ch. 2, par. 19 link - that's for "-mi" verbs, and refers to "dual".

@Davïd "No data received." And Chrome shows me a little frowny face.

@Susan Para. 363. "Number.—There are three numbers: the singular, dual, and plural." (in section on "[Verb]INFLECTION: PRELIMINARY REMARKS"

@Susan Try this

And if that works, you should get a search field in the right-hand sidebar that will search Smyth only, and you can bung in "dual" and get it that way.

@Davïd It opened! Thanks. Since infinitives don't even have (grammatical) subject, I'm skeptical about this whole thing (I think he just meant the pronoun), but I'm going to read about it. BTW, this is totally foreign to NT, yes?

@Susan Just to be safe, I checked Blass-Debrunner-Funk, in para. 2 they say the "dual" is one of the features of Attic idiom that had disappeared in the Greek vernacular of the period to which the NT belongs.

@Susan So, yes. ;)

@Davïd By the way, is there perchance a word missing from the first parenthetical statement in the second sentence here (or it's some British idiom I don't know)?

@Susan Ha - no, it's rubbish. Thanks!

@Susan Fixed, and commit message credits you. ;)

@Davïd I was looking through LXX Pentateuch (via Accordance) (because I think it's oldest?) at Hebrew duals (nouns!) and also so far have not found them translated that way.

Btw - "Blass-Debrunner-Funk" = A Greek Grammar of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature although you may well know that one already.

@Susan There are no dual verb forms in Hebrew (can say that with some confidence!)

@Davïd Right!

@Susan But I take it that the Greek "dual" is already gone by the 3rd C BCE.

@Davïd Evidently. So maybe I'm not so interested. :-)

@Susan :) btw - not my business - but are you anywhere near the Pacific? I'm just curious about time-zones.

@Davïd Nope, Boston MA, UTC -4

@Susan Ah, so this is a "morning coffee" chat. ;)

Early on a Saturday for BH.SE! But I probably wasn't far off here, tbf.

@Davïd I'm actually just totally messed up.....work nights, frequently up all night. I'll go to bed soon. :-)

@Susan Ughh - so worth staying clear of caffeine, then!

I never managed well with night shifts =/

@Davïd Somehow I never got a taste for coffee....

@Susan Which, like avoiding smoking, is kind(er) to one's bank account, too.

@JackDouglas I've added a comment to your Meta post, Jack. Again, this is a somewhat outside my area, but I don't think I'm misrepresenting the case here.

@Davïd thanks, I've added a special exception to my list :)

@JackDouglas Hiya - I was just re-reading that Meta thread, as it happens. I do think (as I commented) that Thomas is exceptional; perhaps a bit like the Didache: an early non-canonical text that (because of antiquity and importance for discussion of canonical texts) is worth finding a place for.

In other words, this should be on-topic:

@JackDouglas Actually, I was re-reading the "What texts..." meta - where there is some cross-over, of course.

@JackDouglas Yes, that would be my inclination.

I don't think opening the door to Thomas will bring a slew of other texts tagging along -- and I wouldn't be happy if they did!

@Davïd Sorry, I got distracted. Per that link on dual verbs, "Except in a few cases in poetry the first person plural is used for the first person dual." So even apart from the "no subject to define a number" infinitive problem, I don't think he was positing a dual πληρῶσαι. On the other hand, apparently such a pronoun exists with dative νῷν per a google search. I'm going to change the answer to say that ἡμῖν is plural not dual, and then your link will be appropriate.

@Susan Sounds good to me, Susan. Actually - I thought you might be snoozing by now! ;)

@Davïd If the question doesn't get closed and we can achieve some pseudo-consensus, we can perhaps update Dan's answer (if he agrees) to specifically include Thomas.

@Susan or you could all just vote for mine :)

@JackDouglas :-P I meant on the "What texts..." question...

@JackDouglas @Susan - And I suppose that would be "Community Rule", too, wouldn't it. I've just added a comment to Dan's "Gnostic texts" post on Meta, btw.

@Davïd Are there "Community Rules?" (Somehow it seems like I should know this...)

@Susan I just meant the "de facto" thing, i.e, ruling by community consensus. (And a bit of tongue-in-cheek, since this is BH.SE!)

@Susan I like the way Robert and blundin's answers are both on 11 votes: although they kind of contradict each other, they capture the tension between drawing the line somewhere and allowing discretion

@Davïd whew. But we need an un-ambiguous post to link to when people violate the non-Rule, so a clear consensus behind something on meta would be nice.

@JackDouglas Exactly. I don't think everybody realized that they contradict each other when they were voting, or there'd be more DVs.

@JackDouglas I was saying I was uncomfortable with the contradiction, but you're actually saying you like it that way?

@Susan yes

@JackDouglas They aren't any more. ;) (Too bad we can't link to two previous comments!)

it gives room for maneuver when there is a question/answer in the grey area that is really interesting or conversely when a question is a bit poor.

@JackDouglas But how is that helpful for figuring out whether to leave open questions like this one?

@JackDouglas oh, I see.

@Susan it's got a great answer :)

@JackDouglas True. OK, I have now voted for your revised answer. As well as probably for a few things that contradict it in one way or another....

@Susan (and really @All) Regarding this comment about Systematic Theology.

It seems far too broad to say "We're not able to address systematic theology at BH.SE" when there is a level of support for across Scripture answers being allowed.

I have from the beginning of my association with BH.SE argued that one cannot remove Sys. Theo. from interpretation, especially in my hermeneutic, which sees God as divine author behind all Scripture, and so all Scripture can inform on passages to some extent. That's not to downplay contextual analysis, Biblical Theology, etc.

I know there has been a lot of debate about this, and thought that it had settled down after the meta post (2nd link above). But I did notice in the reasons to close that systematic theology was added as a valid reason to close, which I had not ever noticed before (when was that added? perhaps I just missed it before, I rarely vote to close).

Additionally, the meta post linked to for the "off topic" of "systematic theology" explanation, I don't even see that topic addressed in. I had even upvoted that answer, but did not consider it against systematic theology answers.

@ScottS Yes, I'm aware of the potential problem with the statement. I was thinking because we have a close reason that says, "questions regarding systematic theology are off topic" that I was on safe ground, but I'm open for discussion on that. I just qualified the comment as "not able to address questions primarily about systematic theology" to try to allow that systematic theology may come up in answers.

That all said, I do agree that the question itself is too broad, and does not focus on a particular passage, and perhaps should be closed for those reasons if not corrected.

(Apologies for editing something that doesn't have a visible revision history. I changed it from "not able to address systematic theology" to "not able to address questions primarily about systematic theology.")

@Susan Do you know when that close reason was added? Was it somewhat "recent"? I think it should be eliminated as a reason, as usually either the "too broad" or "no specific Bible passage" is going to weed out most any "systematic" type questions.

@ScottS Pretty sure it's been there as long as I've had voting privileges, but that's not all that long. :-)

@ScottS @Susan Perhaps worth looking at the oldest, very first question posed in Meta. I don't think this is "new" - would be worth having input from @Caleb, @JonEricson and others (Dan, Jack) who have been around a while.