[B-Greek] Reading the Enchiridion by Epictetus
Carl Conrad
cwconrad2 at mac.com
Wed Mar 19 09:15:27 EDT 2008
The web site that Louis Sorenson has compiled was slightly garbled in
his message cited below. It is simply:
http://www.letsreadgreek.com/epictetus/
It is a splendid compilation and the reading group that he is
sponsoring looks to be an enjoyable and fruitful undertaking for those
who participate in it -- however few there may be, they will be richer
both as intelligent readers (NOT translators) of Koine Greek and as
conoscenti of the world in which the GNT took shape. Like the
evangelists who disseminated the Christian gospel and who precipitated
the Greek corpus of writings that we know as the NT, Epictetus was an
itinerant preacher. Moreover there will be MP3 files of this work as
read aloud in Koine pronunciation favored by Randall Buth as well as
in the conventional Erasmian pronunciation. It is good to see such
enthusiasm expended for Koine Greek apart from the GNT itself.
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
On Mar 18, 2008, at 9:23 PM, Louis Sorenson wrote:
>
> '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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