Saturday 26 October 2019

LYSIAS on Patreon

There will be more #Lysias educational excerpts in PDF format available from the #metousia #patreon this week !


Here's what one sculptor thought he looked like.

I will be posting the Amazons passage from Lysias's Funeral Oration on the Patreon that runs parallel to this blog. Watch twitter for updates.


Monday 14 October 2019

THETIS

#thetis #greekart #nereid #seagoddess #greekceramics


Greek artists often depicted Thetis as accompanied by dolphins, sea horses or Tritones.



So the female figure riding a sea horse in these two mosaics may very well be Thetis however another popular theme was her Wedding to Peleus.




As Thetis like other sea gods had shapeshifting powers the lion on her shoulder would tell a Greek viewer this is Peleus the mortal father of Achilles wrestling with the goddess.

One aspect of the story rarely pointed out that would explain her resistance  is that Peleus killed her nephew and she seems to have had mixed feelings about her marriage to a mere mortal though given the other choices were being ravished by Zeus or Poseidon ... 




Sunday 6 October 2019

Passive secrets

#greeknewtestament #biblestudy #futurepassive #classicalgreek #luke #gospel

LUKE 12:2

A lot of people are fascinated by this verse because they think it hints at Gnostic mysteries or encourages mysticism or is about prophecies and various other explanations.

Another aspect of interest are the verb forms

ouden de sugkekalmmenon estin ho ouk apokaluphtheesetai kai krupton ho ou gnoostheesetai

nothing (there) is and which has been hidden perfect passive participle of sugkaluptoo

note the the removal of too and the change and doubling of the p to m
note that pi + mu becomes double mu

then ho with an accent so who or which not FUTURE PASSIVE will be revealed
teh pi changes again to a phi befor ethe theta that marks passive
and  secret which will be known ginooskoo has a sigma before the passive marker as the actual stem is gnoo

Note which in Greek not that

Note the future passive

Lets reverse that without changing the meaning more than slightly

If Jesus had spoken modern English he might have said everything that is hidden or covered up or secret will become revealed or known.

I think Luke was not just bilingual or multilingual and not only retains the parallelism we see in Hebrew texts but enhances this with prose rhythm being a speaker of Koine Greek who probably also read some classical Greek literature.

So this verse tells us something about secrets and about posibly about Luke as a person and writer.

Consider next what verse 3 says that things said in the dark will be heard in the light and private whisperings proclaimed in public.

No more secrets.

and 3 very good examples of the passive and sound changes caused by adding theta to a stem