A side point, but one of the illuminating and disappointing aspects of reading histocial-critical scholarship is to discover that there is a real tension, and occasional conflict, between the Classicists and the NT scholars. The Classicists quite rightly point out that the texts of the NT are ancient Greek documents amenable to the same analysis as the other such ancient texts. NT scholars, ever on the watch for boundary violations, agree right up to the point where Classcists start translating and intepreting. But when it comes right down to it, why treat the NT differently than Homer or Plato? And if not why the tension? It seems pretty clear. Nobody considers Homer sacred scripture. (But I did have a couple professors I wondered about…)
Lacking the Greek my favorite translation of Homer is by Richmond Lattimore. I must have read his versions rather early since I don’t remember when. There are other fine translations but for me nothing else quite “sounds like” Homer. (For Euripides it’s got to be Paul Roche.)
I plan on reading it in English, so I’ll see about getting the Lattimore translation. I see he’s also done the Gospels. Have you read his translation, and if so, what did you think?
As for Greek plays, I got this a few years back:
I’ve only read Antigone and Alcestis, but both were great reads.
Thank you, BJH1960, for getting back to us on this. Yes, my impression is that MG and JPG are almost identical. We do not have any evidence or any reason to believe that Attic or other forms of older than Koine Greek was much different than JPG.
I’m not talking about different local accents (like South US vs Bronx); or even about different vocabulary; or different grammatical/syntactical structures. I’m talking about the actual pronunciation of diphthongs or vowels. Those should have been very, very similar across space around the time of Jesus, and even back to the Classical period.
I understand the reasons behind why people use the Erasmian system today (basically, ‘that’s what i learn’ and ‘it helps me spell better’). And that’s fine. I’m just glad someone took the time to do what we all thought impossible: getting indisputable evidence of how a language was pronounced 2000 years ago! No recordings necessary! Amazing, in my book.
I’m not talking about different local accents (like South US vs Bronx) . . . I’m talking about the actual pronunciation of diphthongs or vowels.
But different pronunciations of diphthongs and vowels is one of the things that differentiates a Southern accent from Bronx accent. A Southern ** you do not have permission to see this link **. A lot of distinctive mergers that are used to distinguish regional accents (pin/pen; cot/caught; marry/merry) are vowel mergers. How vowels are realized is one of the principal elements of a regional accent.
“But different pronunciations of diphthongs and vowels is one of the things that differentiates a Southern accent from Bronx accent.”
Indeed.
** you do not have permission to see this link **
I’m from Minnesota. Unless you’re also from the Upper Midwest, your “o” is going to sound a lot different than mine.
Richmond Lattimore’s translation of the NT is very interesting. I’m sure Prof Ehrman would quibble wwith some of his choices (for example, he never capitalizes “son of man”) but it is illuminating to read alongside the NRSV. Lattimore’s goal was to produce a readable text that highlights its “greekiness”. He removes the chapter and verse markers and formats the text into paragraphs.
Another volume from Lattimore, one of my favorites, is his edition of Greek Lyrical poetry.
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This work contains my favorite description of a solar eclipse (or the reaction to seeing an eclipse) from the ancient world.
Nothing will suprise me any more, nor be too wonderful for belief,
now that the lord upon Olympus, father Zeus, dimmed the daylight
and made darkness come upon us in the noon and the sunshine.
So limp terror has descended on mankind.
After this, men will believe anything. They can expect anything.
Be not astonished any more, although you see
beasts of the dry land exchange with dolphins,
and assume their place in the watery pastures of the sea,
and beasts who loved the hills find the ocean’s crashing waters
sweeter than the bulk of land.
-Archilochus of Paros 660(?) BCE
And a 7th century lament from Alcman of Sparta-
No longer, maiden voices sweetcalling, sounds of allurement,
can my limbs bear me up; I wish, I wish I could be a seabird
who with halcyons skims the surf-flowers of the seawater
with careless heart, a seablue and sacred waterfowl.
Another classicist’s translation you might find interesting is from J B Phillips. His strategy was the ooposite of Lattimore, to provide a modern sounding english version. An equally valid approach of course.
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To me, pronunciation is pronouncing the diphthong ει as /e/ /ee/. Accent is pronouncing “tip” at more of a clear /ee/ sound or a mix or a and e.
I don’t follow the distinction you are drawing.
Still, I would point out that the actual sound made to represent the same diaphoneme can vary wildly across accents. They can vary so wildly that the very first time one encounters a new accent, one may quite literally not understand a single word.
Yet once one–subconsciously–“recalibrates” so to speak (“oh, that’s the sound they make when they are pronouncing that diaphoneme”) it becomes quite easy to understand.
I remember the first time, when I was a young child, I met someone from the UK. She didn’t have some crazy Scottish or Cockney accent–it wasn’t even a thick Yorkshire accent–, but I couldn’t understand a single word she was saying; she might as well have been speaking German to me. But now that I’ve been acquainted with the accents common in the UK and their general tendencies, I could hear someone speaking in that accent, and, depending on the specific context, it might very well not even register that the person is speaking with an accent at all (If a meet someone with a Birmingham, UK, accent working behind the counter at a convenience store in rural Georgia, I will notice immediate; If I bump into someone with a London accent in Schiphol Airport, I might not.). Heck, I remember having to ask my cousins from North Carolina to repeat themselves (repeatedly) the first time I met them.
The point is that we, linguistic animals, can do this re-calibration so easily, that we can very quickly lose track of how widely different regional accents are at the level of actual physical sounds. Once we are acquainted with the distinctive patterns of an accent, decoding it becomes effortless.
I had an odd and wonderful experience several years ago. I was eating at a chinese restaraunt and a mixed group of ethnic chinese and europeans were seated at a nearby table. In their conversation they switched easily back and forth between mandarin and english. At one point a woman was speaking for while but only in chinese. I speak chinese not at all and I was concentrating on the rhythm of her voice and her pronunciation. Right in the middle of her monologue she said a single sentence in english and then went immediately back into chinese. I suppose I was so focused on her chinese locution that when she spoke in english I recognized it but understood it not a bit. I had the odd and wonderful experience, just for a moment, of hearing english as it must sound to somone who doesn’t understand it.
Thanks, Stephen.
I’ll certainly be checking out Lattimore’s NT translation.
What beautiful Greek poetry!
I’m woefully ignorant of Ancient Greek poetry. I think the only thing I’ve read is Anne Carlson’s If Not Winter: Fragments of Sappho, which was breathtaking.
I’m not sure how well versed you are in Modern Greek poetry, but it really is a treasure trove.
“We do not have any evidence or any reason to believe that Attic or other forms of older than Koine Greek was much different than JPG.”
I’m curious as to why you think this is the case.
Kantor says, “…although the pronunciation of Hellenistic Greek was remarkably close to Modern Greek, the pronunciation of Plato and Aristotle remains a good distance away from those on the streets of Athens today.”
“I understand the reasons behind why people use the Erasmian system today (basically, ‘that’s what i learn’ and ‘it helps me spell better’).”
I do, too. From what I’ve heard, it’s a lot easier to learn.
I’m not sure how well versed you are in Modern Greek poetry, but it really is a treasure trove.
Blindingly ignorant I’m afraid to admit, other than C P Cavafy who I discovered in school by way of Brit E M Forster’s influential essay.
Why isn’t anything going on in the senate?
Why are the senators sitting there without legislating?
Because the barbarians are coming today.
What’s the point of senators making laws now?
Once the barbarians are here, they’ll do the legislating.
…
Why this sudden bewilderment, this confusion?
(How serious people’s faces have become.)
Why are the streets and squares emptying so rapidly,
everyone going home lost in thought?
Because night has fallen and the barbarians haven’t come.
And some of our men just in from the border say
there are no barbarians any longer.
Now what’s going to happen to us without barbarians?
Those people were a kind of solution.
C. P. Cavafy, “Waiting for the Barbarians” from C.P. Cavafy: Collected Poems. Translated by Edmund Keeley
(Quoted only partially because of copyright concerns. Fair Usage. No violation surely.)
I can think of few things more wonderful than to be a poet, even in a culture like ours that values it not at all. Like many educated folks with a modicum of verbal facility I have written reams of utter drivel over the years. -Sigh- I know what Moses felt like when he looked over into the Promised Land. What a terrible fate! To be able to recognize greatness but not to be great. How can the gods be so cruel?
I was once advised by a teacher who had both ancient greek and hebrew that a good way to ease the difficulty of learning these languages was to first learn their modern forms. The theory being that even with the changes over the millennia there is still a commonality of concept, of an underlying pre-verbal logic of sorts which a non-native speaker must master before being truly proficient.
Cavafy is by far my favorite. “Waiting for the Barbarians” still speaks volumes.
I also quite like Kostas Karyotakis.
Giorgos Seferis and Odysseas Elytis are very highly regarded. I’ve not been able to appreciate their work as much as the other two, but it’s just a matter of taste – I mean why do I love Blake and Keats but not Shelley and Byron?
If interested, an excellent introduction is Kimon Friar’s “Modern Greek Poetry.” He was an amazing translator.
As for that theory of your teacher’s about learning first modern forms, very interesting. Out of curiosity, I might just look into it and see what I can find.
BDEhrman
FreedomBen
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Robert