Koiné and the layers beneath the text

It’s been a good day today. I’m looking forward to a return to Blackfriars in Michaelmas Term - and I recognise that my koiné is too rusty to raise its head in public. So I revise. And I find gems I never expected.

I’m presented with a simplified Gospel passage for translation. Here are the ‘mathetai’. Who are they? First impulse is to go with ‘disciples’. That’s the usual translation. I pause while my inner senses examine other possibilities. Yes, that’s it. ‘Students’ - and they’re running toward their teacher. Running? - and this is where BDAG earns its keep - the verb can also mean ‘to make an effort to advance spiritually or intellectually.’ Now that’s altogether a different picture. 

And when they get to their teacher, they ‘prosekynesan’. They ‘worship’ him. How, I ask myself, do they ‘worship’ him? What exactly do they do when they worship? 

And memory offers a prompt of January Saturday mornings at the Orthodox Church in North Oxford when the regular worshippers bow low as they enter the sacred space and make a gesture in the air below their faee, a gesture I interpret as a sign of the cross. And, later, a priestly person at my ear murmurs ‘It’s supposed to be a Proskynesis’. Or, as BDAG again has it : the custom of prostrating oneself before persons and kissing their feet or the hem of their garment, the ground, etc. The Persians did this before their deified king. The Greeks before a divinity or something holy.

I saw this once at St Barnabas, Pimlico. A morning of the Triduum. The liturgical colour is black. The three priests step into the chancel and ‘prostrate’ themselves. Side by side. Flat on their faces. I still experience a frisson as I relive that moment when time stood still.

fc oxon 2017 july 30 sunday

How I came to study New Testament Greek

I learned some Greek in Sydney. Sometimes I used it to explain the meanings of ‘ethnomusicology’ to my students. But the story of how I came to claim ‘I spent two years with the Greek of the New Testament’ is just one of those things that happens to me from time to time. 

I’d been to the dentist and chose to return by a different route.  (Yes - that had to be the road less travelled.) I turned south onto St Giles and as I passed the House of the Blackfriars in Oxford I spied a notice board. Now, noticeboards have long held a fascination for me. There is always a chance there will be a message waiting for me. This time there was. 

Every week in term time one of the friars taught a class in New Testament Greek. There was an open invitation to attend. There was no charge. I joined the club.  And so for a full six terms I practised with the koiné picked up in Sydney while the rest of the class played in the Erasmian mode.  All very easy-going and friendly.

As I worked with the Greek of the Gospels I became more and more aware of the many different layers - the interpolations and emendations - contributed to these very composite texts by so many different minds at so many different times. Differences which were ironed out and smoothed over in all of the various English versions I had previously studied. 

It was a great experience. Of inestimable value. And I am so grateful.

francis cameron, oxford, 2015 september 10

Rees-Mogg for Leader?

Among the ephemera that daily flit across my screen is the ‘news’ that The Honourable Jacob Rees-Mogg, a more than comfortably wealthy man and Member of Parliament for the constituency of North East Somerset, is in the running for imminent leadership of the Conservative and Unionist Party. Only a couple of weeks ago, so I am informed, the Odds were 50 to1 against. Now they are 10 to 1 against.  

This wouldn’t surprise me in the least. In the House, he lounges long lean and lanky at the end of a bench far from the madding crowd of hopefuls squabbling at the dispatch box. When he speaks, his well modulated tones betray him. He really is so very very far from the common herd surrounding him. His beautifully crafted dark suit, almost antediluvian in style, declaims a tailor of exquisite eminence. Give him a top hat and he would meld into place among the Victorian grandees of government from the Tory shires. 

In short, he’s just the sort of man the Tory ladies at Conference would vote for at the hustings. 

What a change that would be for the country! Real Tory and Real Labour, individuals of character and integrity, facing each other across the Chamber. 

Perchance to dream - ay, there’s the rub …

fc oxon 2017 july 16 sunday