[B-Greek] Reading the Enchiridion by Epictetus
Louis Sorenson
llsorenson at hotmail.com
Tue Mar 18 21:23:55 EDT 2008
'The Encheiridion is an item that everybody ought to have read many times along with Plato's Apology' (Carl W. Conrad) http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/b-greek/2007-October/044644.html
I've taken up Dr. Conrad and Dr. Buth's advice about reading the Encheiridion by Epictetus – and am encouraging others to do the same. The Encheiridion is also know as ‘the Manual’, ‘the Handbook’ and the ‘Enchiridion.’ The Greek Study group, an online reading reading group, is beginning an Encheiridion reading group. The group will start on March 24, 2008 and go for twelve weeks,initially reading through chapters 1-26 of the Encheiridion. The website for the reading group can be found at http://www.letsreadgreek.com/epictetus.There is no modern English commentary on the Encheiridion (that I could find). There are a number of resources on the LetsReadGreek website (that can be found nowhere else than in a library) that will help those who want to read the Encheiridion in Greek: a bibliography page, Greek text, textual history, audio recordings, collected notes from various commentaries,vocabulary page, downloadable pdf files from Schenkl, Schweighauser, and other etc.
The Encheiridion and the New Testament have a deceptively similar vocabulary. There are about 1300 distinct words in the Encheiridion. A quick comparison shows that 825 of them are common with the New Testament vocabulary. 239 words occur in the New Testament more than 50times; 296 words more than 30 times. The Encheiridion was used and adapted by later Christians because of its moral content – they changed the names ‘Zeus’ to ‘God’ and ‘Socrates’ to ‘Paul’. The language is very similar to the New Testament, but quite a bit more polished. Sharp's 1916 book on the similarities can be found at http://www.letsreadgreek.com/epictetus/resources/epictetus_and_the_new_testament.pdf. The best work on comparing the NT and Epictetus is by Adolf Bonhöffer (German 1911) Epiktet und das Neue Testament . (The conclusion was that while the language is similar, there was no borrowing between the two.)Anyone is welcome to join the reading group. The resources will be available for at least the next year.
Louis Sorenson
(Enchiridion Greekstudy Group Coordinator)
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