[B-Greek] Eusebius of Caesarea on Psalm 23
Alex Poulos
apviper at gmail.com
Tue Jun 22 15:06:10 EDT 2010
Always wanting to practice my Greek, I recently cracked open Eusebius's
commentary on the Psalms. It's a massive work, and never been translated
into English (as far as I know). His Greek is quite difficult, especially
for a newbie like myself, and I can't for the life of me figure out what's
going on here:
Ὁ μὲν γὰρ τέλειος γένοιτ' ἂν ὁ κατὰ τὴν εἰκόνα τοῦ Θεοῦ καὶ τὴν ὁμοίωσιν
αὐτοῦ τὴν ψυχὴν τοῖς κατ' ἀρετὴν τρόποις κεχαρακτηρισμένοις·* ὁ καὶ βασιλέα
τὸν Κύριον*, *ἀλλ' οὐ ποιμένα ἐπιγραφόμενος*· ὁ δὲ ἐκπεσὼν ταύτης...
hO MEN GAR TELEIOS GENOIT' AN hO KATA THN EIKONA TOU QEOU KAI THN hOMOIWSIN
AUTOU THN YUXHN TOIS KAT ARETHN TROPOIS KEXARAKTHRISMENOIS. hO KAI BASILEA
TON KURION, ALL OU POIMENA EPIGRAFOMENOS. hO DE EKPESWN TAUTHS
The general gist is a contrast between the potential (spiritually) mature
one, and the sinner (he goes on to give a rather vivid description of
sinners, with metaphors of horses and wolves). I get the part about being
"in accordance with the image of God, and his likeness." I don't know what
κεχαρακτηρισμένοις, though I think it comes from χαρα and has something to
do with the customs of the church. But I can't figure out what's going on
with the ὁ και βασιλεα ... αλλ ου ποιμενα... bit. What is being elided
here? Why on earth are βασιλεα and κυριον in the accusative. What is
contrasting with αλλα?
I guess this isn't technically Biblical Greek, but it is Greek about
Biblical Greek so I hope it's fair game.
Any ideas, ω φιλοι ?
χαρις υμιν,
Alex Poulos
Senior - Computer Science
NC State University
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