cwconrad wrote:I would assume that the choral song designated κομμός, a standard alternative to the regular choral ode or στάσιμον that intervenes between ἐπεισόδια in Greek tragedy is in line with the NT suggestions or references to a shared ritualized lament:
Now that, with an assumption, we are shuffling out along the branch, hoping that it doesn't give way, let me suggest what might lie out where even the finches don't dare stand.
To speculate, with no possibility of proof, they could be funeral songs, possibly Christian adaptations of dirges that were sung. By Christianised, I mean, incorporation the theology and experience of the Resurrection in general, rather than the white robes and golden crowns that characterise the eschatological cult of the martyrs, that was to develop later.
Louw and Nida (52.1) put the meaning more or less towards "the beat(ing) of the breast",and "lament(ation)". To my mind that is moving towards στεναγμός "groaning and sighing" and ἔτυπτεν (εἰς) τὸ στῆθος αὐτοῦ (Luke 18:13, Tax collector cf. Pharisee in the temple), with a feeling of loss ἐρήμωσις. And they put the other words at the start of their section 52 into a more formalised environment.
After CWC (above), as a song, it is somewhat closer perhaps to θρῆνος "a song incorporating wailing-like mournful tones". I might suggest, in fancy, that the antiphon character of the κομμός may have been in the κοπετός mentioned here, or perhaps the κοπετός is a term to designate a particular genre of songs appropriate to a funeral, or even activities, of which singing dirges was a part.
Now that I have taken several steps past the end of the branch, there is probably the need to wonder if any of that could be true. Besides κοπετός / κόπτεσθαι being in the plural, and it being used with the adjective γυναικεῖος by Plutarch, what other evidence could be used to test speculation's heady flight?