Re: Silly Greek Questions?

From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Fri Apr 03 1998 - 07:54:52 EST


At 5:49 AM -0600 4/3/98, Jim West wrote:
>
>All punctuation is secondary. Therefore, all punctuation is tendentious
>and tenuous and theological.

The first sentence is fundamentally true. The second is tendentious and
tenuous, even if it is not theological. We can argue about punctuation and
recognize rightly that there are legitimate alternatives and editorial
choices to be made in constituting a text; we can even grant that some
editorial choices of this sort may be made for theological reasons, but I
think it is misleading to suggest that word-order and clause construction
are so arbitrary that no particular editorial choice of punctuation is
superior to any other particular editorial choice of punctuation. Or was
that what you really meant to suggest, Jim?

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics/Washington University
One Brookings Drive/St. Louis, MO, USA 63130/(314) 935-4018
Home: 7222 Colgate Ave./St. Louis, MO 63130/(314) 726-5649
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu OR cconrad@yancey.main.nc.us
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/



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