Rhema - Greek Philosophers

Greek Philosophers

Both Plato (c. 428–347 BC) and Aristotle (384–322 BC) used the terms logos, rhema and onoma. In Plato's usage, a logos (often translatable as a sentence) is a sequence in which verbs are mingled with nouns and every logos must have an onoma and rhema. For Plato, every logos was either true or false and in a logos, names included rhema which denotes actions and onoma a mark set on those who do the actions. Aristotle identified three components as central to the proposition: onoma, rhema and logos. These terms are translated differently depending on the context of the discussion - grammar or logic, as in the table on the right. But it was only in the 12th century that grammarians began to think in terms of units we understand as subject and predicate.