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
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