Learning Greek: How Far To Go?

c stirling bartholomew cc.constantine at worldnet.att.net
Tue May 15 15:52:58 EDT 2001


Marianna,

Very interesting, however . . .

on 5/15/01 11:36 AM, YalieFan at aol.com wrote:

> I used to feel the same way about Latin- it's a dead language; no one speaks
> it anymore....that is until my graduation from Yale College.  One of the
> professors gave an address in Latin, complete with jokes, that many others
> laughed at and obviously understood.

I wonder if Virgil or Julius Caesar would have understood the jokes? School
Latin is not the same as classical Latin. You can find comments (often
derogatory) in the scholars of the Renaissance (e.g., Erasmus) about the
school Latin being spoken and written by scholars of that era. If we can
take these comments seriously then the Latin of the  Renaissance scholar
might not have been very intelligible to Virgil or Julius Caesar.  So is it
really the same language? This is most likely a moot question, depends on
how you define your terminology.

Let's say there is a group of people who meet twice a month for dinner at
the King David Hotel (JUC picks up the tab!) and during dinner they all
speak and tell jokes in Hellenistic Greek.  Would the Apostle Paul
understand the jokes? I doubt it.

Clay  

--  
Clayton Stirling Bartholomew
Three Tree Point
P.O. Box 255 Seahurst WA 98062





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