[B-Greek] Greek "style"
Kenneth Litwak
javajedi2 at yahoo.com
Mon Oct 25 12:44:03 EDT 2004
--- "Carl W. Conrad" <cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu>
wrote:
> At 1:04 PM -0700 10/21/04, Kenneth Litwak wrote:
> > As I'm teaching a course on NT SUrvey, and going
> >through the textbook, I see the usual discussions
> >about did so-and-so write such-and-such a letter.
> I'm
> >not introducing that topic here, as it would be
> >inappropriate, but I got to thinkng about Greek
> >"style." Obviously, Hebrews and 1 Peter are much
> more
> >complex than 1 John. However, when I ventured
> outside
> >the NT in grad school, alomst everything (except
> the
> >LXX) was significantly harder. Even Ignatious,
> whom
> >one might have expected to have "NT" style was
> harder.
> > Josephus was significnatly harder. And nothing I
> >read in the NT even begins to rise to the level of
> >complexity of THucydides or Lucian
> (Pseudo-Eupolemos
> >yes, Lucian, no). It seems to me in thinking about
> >the Greek Iv'e read, even not being a classicist,
> that
> >the gulf between a Thucydides and any NT author is
> so
> >great that to make pronouncements about the stark
> >differences in style/level of sophistication
> between
> >NT authors is, by analogy, quibbling over the
> >differences between prose from thrid- and
> >fourth-graders, while ignoring how both compare to
> the
> >prose of an educated adult. In other other words,
> >saying that 1 Peter is much better than John
> >stylistically may be true, but neither begins to
> rise
> >to the level of well-known classical authors, so
> the
> >differences within the NT are straining at gnats
> and
> >swallowing camels (ignoring how all NT swritings
> are
> >much less sophisticated than secular Greek texts).
> Am
> >I overstating the differecnes between NT Greek
> texts
> >and non-biblical Greek texts?
>
> Well, I think we've had this discussion--or others
> like it--before. I do,
> of course, think that Ken's overstating the
> differences between NT Greek
> texts and non-Biblical Greek texts. Certainly I
> think that it's erroneous
> to postulate the sort of gulf between the best NT
> Greek writers--and I'd
> probably put the author of 1 Peter and the author of
> Hebrews decidedly into
> that category and I'd put the letters generally
> attributed without dispute
> to Paul there also, and yes, Luke--and the average
> (if there were any such
> thing) extra-biblical Greek writer.
I certainly would not challenge Carl on knowledge of
clasical Greek as a whole. I still affirm, however,
having read Hebrews and 1 Peter and Luke that none of
these are even in the same ball partk with Lucian's
How to Write History or Thucydides' War (the prologue,
at least). Can you find an NT sample that matches War
1.22 in complexity?
Now, Perry may be correct that complexity and
sophistication are separate issues. I don't have a
"handy-dandy" chart that rates classical authors in
elvel of sophistication, or rhetorical skill, and I
don't feel prepared to try to decide between the two.
I think that the
> terms of comparison
> are wrongly drawn; we ought to draw them between
> those writers who have had
> a formal rhetorical-grammatical Greek education and
> those who have not. I
> think that the only reason Ken's assertion may SEEM
> to have merit is that
> the extra-biblical Greek one is likely to read is
> literary Greek produced
> by well-educated writers, while much of the NT
> corpus has been composed by
> writers with little of what can be called a
> rhetorical-grammatical Greek
> education. But if the reader has an adequate
> vocabulary, it seems to me
> that works like pseudo-Lucian's ONOS and De Dea
> Syria are comparable prose
> to that of Luke,
Okay, so there may be overlap in level of
sophistication/difficulty/complexity. I can grant
that, as I think I already did in the case of
Pseudo-Eupolemus.
and among classical Attic writers
> Lysias and Xenophon are
> not really difficult. The trick is that you DO have
> to learn the
> distinctive vocabulary and accustom yourself to the
> writer's style.
But isn't becoming accustomed to the author's style
part of the point?
> I think it's a mistake to attempt resolving a
> question like this one in
> simple generalizations.
That may be the case, but I think that if NT writings
tend to cluster at one end/point of the
"complexity/sophistication" specturm as compared to
classical writers, Hellenisitc historiographers, and
other Greek prose writers from the Second Temple
period generally cluster at other points on the
"complexity/sophistication" spectrum, that there is
somehting here worth considering, even if not on
B-Greek.
Ken Litwak
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