[B-Greek] The continuum of history - of a language and generally
Carl Conrad
cwconrad2 at mac.com
Mon Apr 19 10:50:43 EDT 2010
The old curmudgeon (Laudator Temporis Acti) in his blog this morning cites E.R.Dodds, _Pagans and Christians in an Age of Anxiety: Some Aspects of Religious Experience from Marcus Aurelius to Constantine-- (1965)
(http://laudatortemporisacti.blogspot.com/2010/04/periods-and-ages.html):
I'm reminded of another classic on the same subject, lectures delivered in 1912 and published in 1935, Gilbert Murray's _Five Stages of Greek Religion_. Both of these are illuminating books, but the snippet cited from Dodds states so precisely and clearly what I have often attempted to say about diachronic perspective and about Biblical Koine Greek as "a language in flux":
"The practice of chopping history into convenient lengths and calling them 'periods' or 'ages' has of course its drawbacks. Strictly speaking, there are no periods in history, only in historians; actual history is a smoothly flowing continuum, a day following a day. And even when hindsight enables us to cut it through at a critical point, there is always a time-lag and an overlap."
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
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