[B-Greek] Clement and "rational"

Stephen C. Carlson scarlson at mindspring.com
Fri Oct 29 15:20:31 EDT 2004


At 12:45 PM 10/29/2004 -0500, Harold R. Holmyard III wrote:
>>At 07:47 AM 10/29/2004 -0700, Eric Weiss wrote:
>>>Clement of Alexandria: "Agape is truly heavenly food,
>>>a rational banquet."
>>
>>Among all these cites, I think the closest is Paed.
>>2.1.5,3 (Stählin I.157.8): AGAPH DE TWi ONTI EPOURANIOS
>>ESTI TROFH, hESTIASIAS LOGIKH.
>
>
>HH: Could you possibly translate it: "Love for what is heavenly is food, a rational feast"?

There are a couple of points worth considering:

1.  EPOURANIOS is nominative, and is one of those two-ending compounded
adjectives, so it can be--and here in context is--feminine.

2.  In context, Clement is playing on the double meaning of AGAPH
as love and a love feast, and giving its "true" definition, so I
would construe EPOURANIOS with the definens in the predicate, i.e.
with TROFH as "heavenly food".
  
3.  With that in mind, there is little remaining reason to take
TWi ONTI EPOURANIOS as "for what is heavenly" (which if that
was meant I'd rather expect something like TWi EPOURANIWi).
Instead, it seems to mean here "in reality."

4.  hESTIASIAS is not just about eating but includes the social
aspects including its being a setting for speeches.

Stephen Carlson

    


-- 
Stephen C. Carlson                        mailto:scarlson at mindspring.com
Weblog:    http://www.mindspring.com/~scarlson/hypotyposeis/blogger.html
"Poetry speaks of aspirations, and songs chant the words."  Shujing 2.35




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