[B-Greek] Was SKUBALON a swear/vulgar word?
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad2 at mac.com
Mon May 23 15:23:02 EDT 2005
On Monday, May 23, 2005, at 12:06PM, Doug Hoxworth <doughoxworth at yahoo.com> wrote:
>><David>
>>I've been thinking through how you would know if a
>word is thought of as being vulgar. I don't think this
>would be easy to determine.
>
><doug>
>that's a good point david. it's not as if we might
>find an ancient list of cuss words or something! ;) it
>would be difficult to determine from writing alone but
>i don't think it would be impossible.
>
>carl, do you know of anything?
Not that's of any use; one would need to look at the sort of literature -- most
likely graffiti -- that either has not survived or that NT people are less likely
to read -- mimes, dramatic sketches, perhaps epigrams; I think if anything relevant
had come to light, you would have found it in BDAG. In sum, I think it's a question
that excites people's curiosity but that nobody is able to produce anything definitive
to answer the question. That is to say, I think the question is theoretically interesting,
fundamentally harmless, and fundamentally useless.
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad2 at mac.com
WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/
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