[B-Greek] More Post-NT Greek Stuff

Chris Larimer clarimer at hotmail.com
Mon May 26 23:56:06 EDT 2003


Perhaps this is beginning to drift a bit off topic, but I found a new source
on the PROGYMNASMATA (grammar textbooks) that would describe the Koine used
in the late Roman and Byzantine world. The progymnasmata were fundamental to
the teaching of prose composition and elementary rhetoric in European
schools from the Hellenistic period to early modern times. George A.
Kennedy, one of the world's leading scholars of ancient rhetoric, provides
in this volume an English translation of four Greek treatises written during
the time of the Roman empire but studied throughout the Roman and Byzantine
periods-works attributed to Theon, Hermogenes, Aphthonius, and Nicolaus.
Also included in this important volume are translations of the fragments of
Sopatros' treatise as well as John of Sardis' commentary on these exercises.
Several of these works have never before been translated into English and
are here made accessible to the general reader for the first time. The
curriculum described in these works provided basic training in oral and
written expression, but also inculcated cultural values and an understanding
of the conventional literary forms-fable, narrative, chreia, ecphrasis,
comparison, and so on-that were the building blocks of the epics, dramas,
histories, and lyric poetry characteristic of the Greco-Roman period. The
habits of thinking and writing learned in schools using the progymnasmata
molded not only the secular literature of the Greeks and Romans, but also
the writings of the early Christians through the patristic period.

Published by the Society for Biblical Literature in March of this year.
ISBN # 158983061X

Chris Larimer



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