I’ve been out of pocket for several days, but I’ll be continuing that discussion with Chris soon. One thing I’ve been doing is looking over all the examples Chris (Theopologetics) gave of words with -sunê as suffixes. A very strong majority of them involve an emphasis on coherent interactions between people (or the lack thereof, with appropriate context and/or grammatic modifications).
AT Robinson’s offhanded confirmation that -sunê was both a prefix and a suffix meaning “together”, was not given in a fashion where he suggested it was an archaic vestigal meaning. He mentioned it with a series of examples where compound words were formed in such a fashion that we’re supposed to recognize the term means “together”. This will be part of my multi-stage rebuttal about the meaning of the term.
But in short: does a highly respected grammarian writing a historical grammar of Biblical Greek confirm the term is “together” is used as a suffix? Yes. Does he confirm it using examples which indicate we’re supposed to regard it as still meaning “together” as a suffix as much as a prefix? Yes. Is there evidence that the usage as a suffix is rare compared to other qualitative noun modifiers, both during and before Biblical canon composition? Yes. Is the suffix rarely used as such in the Biblical canon? Yes. (Dikaiosunê is the most common such term in the NT by far.) On the other occasions (besides dikaiosunê) the suffix is used, do the contexts routinely indicate the authors/speakers are trying to emphasize the importance of people (or in some cases other things, but even in those cases typically also people) cooperating together, or failing to do so? Yes. (For that matter, is there some evidence in contemporary Greek that the suffix was used to emphasize this? Yes.) Does the meaning “fair-togetherness” routinely make contextual sense as a translation when dikaiosunê occurs? Yessity yes yes.
These are all significant evidences pointing toward the suffix having the intended meaning of “together(ness)”, and I still find the cumulative case very compelling.
But more details to come later when I get around to it. (I do have normal ‘work’ work I have to pile through occasionally.)