by vinobrien » Fri May 09, 2003 3:43 pm
The answer book has given an imperfect middle/passive. The middle also has the sense of "for our own purposes" so I suppose that is their reason. What book are you using?<br /><br />Greek is a language of endless subtlety of expression, or so some texts would have you believe. I'm not so sure that Johnny Hellenikos really used the language to that degree - if you look in Liddle & Scott (the last refuge of the charlatan - and me) you will see that all the possible words for good have similar usages and different usages, so I'm not sure how you make the distinction in Greek prose composition, but kalos seems to be all purpose good, a)gaqos is more toward nobility or beauty and crhstos often seems to be about money.<br /><br />This raises a bigger question. Sorry. Greek, like any language, evolved and meanings change and prose composition in an historic lanquage needs to be "in imitation of" someone to make any lkind of sense. Greek particularly has a huge vocabulary because of its history and development and meanings of words are not constant (Messrs. Liddle and Scott are very useful here). <br /><br />The awful "Captain Corelli's Mandolin" has a character called Bunny Warren who has learnt classical Greek, is parachuted into Kephalonia and introduces himself to the natives with words rendered as something to the effect of "Ic Bunnios ycleped am". Possibly the only good bit in the book, by the way.<br /><br />And, for example, there is the speculation (in fact, an industry) in discriminations between words in the New Testament which tend to mean the same thing. This sheds little light on the meaning of the text but a lot on the commentators.<br /><br />I think I'm trying to say there is no one translation into Greek - don't worry if you got it wrong, you also got it right (as long as you got the right endings). <br />
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