[B-Greek] THIASARCH once only
Anita Clerke
clerke at humanperformance.cc
Thu Dec 27 08:10:38 EST 2007
Thank you Elizabeth for doing that search. It is much appreciated.
Thank you too George for clarifying that the search I performed on
CCE Library yielded a result that, although to me at first sight
seemed to have been another early christian writers comment on the
death of Polycarp, was in fact just a chapter from a book written
just over a hundred years ago:
History of the Origins of Christianity. Book VI. The Reigns of
Hadrian and Antoninus Pius. (A.D. 117-161)Author: Renan, Joseph
Ernest (1823-1892).
I did realise at the time it wasn't the original MPol, that is: The
letter of the Smyrnaeans or the Martyrdom of Polycarp
Translated by J.B. Lightfoot. Adapt. and mod. (c) 1990. ATHENA DATA
PRODUCTS http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/text/martyrdompolycarp-
lightfoot.html 23/12/2007; but I certainly had thought the chapter
titled "The Martyrdom of Polycarpus" was from an early Christian
source. Thanks again.
I am amazed that THIASARCH appears only once in all of Greek
literature, Christian and non-Christian.
Could it be that Lucian made a portmanteau in this particular
instance? Given his extraordinary imagination I presume this is
possible. At odds with this is the thought that if he had made a new
word at this point, he may have been unlikely to have been so modest
about it.
Are there any other words used by Lucian that do not appear in any
other extant literature?
Did any of the Greek writers within a few hundred years of Lucian
produce new words, and made a point of indicating that they had in
fact done so?
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