It isn’t just about print media vs e-texts. It’s also about what LSJ represents culturally. It is an artifact of the British Empire. As such it portrays a particular worldview that is potentially offensive to billions of people. In that last 24 hours I have had face to face conversations with three people. A woman who is Egyptian, a Navajo man and a Russian born and raised in Moscow. None of these people would want to study greek classics filtered through the eyes of British Imperialism.
I mention this because cultural imperialism is a huge concern among bible translation professionals. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that SIL and UBS have been and continue to be obsessed with not exporting western culture.
The whole enterprise represented by classical pedagogy in the UK and elsewhere in Europe represents an attitude that is so ingrained that to many people it is simply invisible. It is a white man’s religion where there is a canon, priests, schools, dogma, you name it. I had three colleagues in the mid 80s who were classics ABDs and heard all about this, later read about it in Donna Tartt’s first novel “Secret History” 1992.
I know, I am painting with a broad brush. All academic work represents a cultural world view so why pick on the LSJ? Because Oxford and Cambridge have been the Mecca for classics for centuries. Makes them an easy target. And being an outsider that never participated in the cult of classics, I don’t worship the same gods. I read Sophocles because he is a very interesting pagan author. I don’t want to read him within the hermeneutical framework represented by 19th Century Empire hermeneutics of Oxford and Cambridge.
mwh got there first, but yes, Matthew 7:5 to that.
The solution is obvious: tell them to get writing their own lexicon right away - and throw away most of the contents of their library while they’re at it, whether it’s on paper or digital.
I have known people who carried this to extremes. Refused to read anything that didn’t agree with their eschatology. I have some pet peeves and British scholarship isn’t one of them.
I read Sophocles because he is a very interesting pagan author. I don’t want to read him within the hermeneutical framework represented by 19th Century Empire hermeneutics of Oxford and Cambridge.
So please no more quoting Jebb and a bit more tolerance for my advocacy of reception theory?
The main problem I have with some LSJ is the Christianising framework. eg ἁμάρτημα …sinful action (from a stoic author!).
Neither you nor Stirling will stop people quoting Jebb, who was an exceptionally fine reader of Sophocles, however distasteful his views on the British Empire and however 19th-century his hermeneutics (which are thereby invalidated, it seems).
You can contrast Stirling’s finding Sophocles a “very interesting” pagan author with his saying “I had a hard time getting through the greek text of Ajax. Alternating between being annoyed and boredom.” Evidently this individual is not stable (in his reception of Sophocles, of course I mean), which should suit you just fine seneca.
Anyway, I expect he’s pleased to have successfully diverted the discussion away from lexical semantics and onto the pervasive yet invisible traces of British cultural imperialism.
I have always argued that texts are not stable so why should posters be?
I find it amusing that Fraenkel claimed that the reason Agamemnon does step onto the tapestries, …is because Agamemnon is a “gentleman” and could not politely refuse his wife. I am sure this is a cultural ideology which dates from the 19th century. Is it also not imperialism or have I misunderstood the dialectic?
The value of reception theory, however passé amongst more advanced circles here, is that no one’s readings (not even Jebb’s) are invalidated as they are always already inscribed in the text.
Given that Reception Theory teaches us that an academic theory concerning the reception of texts must say more about the proponents of the theory than anyone else, we must conclude that anyone promoting Reception Theory must be more culturally biased than anyone who does not.
The Fraenkel example is perfect. A non-Reception theorist reads what Fraenkel wrote and thinks “this man was the greatest Agamemnon scholar of his age and was obviously completely self-aware of his own anachronism and expected his readers to be as well.” A Receptionist (my term, I hope that it catches on) reads it and is blocked from understanding that by his own biases.
I liked this thread more when it was about Lexicons.
Given that Reception Theory teaches us that an academic theory concerning the reception of texts must say more about the proponents of the theory than anyone else, we must conclude that anyone promoting Reception Theory must be more culturally biased than anyone who does not.
I am sure this means something to you but unfortunately its such a crude caricature that all it conveys to me is that you have not studied reception theory. You seem to imagine that the use of the term “culturally biased” is a pejorative term as opposed to an attempt to bring clarity to a discussion. One advantage of reception theory is the way it enables us to consider “critical readings” (such as Fraenkel’s) in a similar way that we might see “literary readings” such as Vergil reading Apollonius reading Euripides. Or Dante and Lucan reading Virgil.
I dont think your paragraph on Fraenkel deserves an answer. I would observe however that it is significant that you use the language of internecine religious dispute. If I have adopted a confrontational approach in the past it is out of despair at the unreflective nature of the debate.
I am sure you found the thread more comfortable when “it was about Lexicons” Your very capitalisation of “lexicons” shows the way you reverence them. They are of course essential but they, too, are texts which we can only be read with the help of other texts.
Who would have thought that a discussion about dictionaries would bring out the worst in all of us, me included. Yesterday I was sputtering with rage about some of the things written here. Fortunately I restrained myself from giving vent.
Here is Professor Franco Montanari’s interview from last month. He discusses his own dictionary and Greek dictionaries in general and touches upon questions such as why no dictionary can be free from defect, why dictionaries have ghost-words, and what parts of Greek literatures might earn fuller coverage in the future.
And here’s another interview with Professor Montanari dealing with the Lexicon of Greek Grammarians of Antiquity.
The Montanari interview confirms what I said earlier in this thread without the positive spin:
The Brill dictionary definitely scores over the main LSJ when it comes to patristic Greek, but very little else, apart from weakly attested words which few will be interested in and perhaps the look on the page.
(Incidentally, Montanari’s point about change in Italian is rather weak. The Italian in the interview is exactly the same as the Italian of fifty years ago, except for the two loan-words database and layout. But LSJ’s English is admittedly antiquated.)
So Stirling has decided not to throw away his hard copy of Lampe, which he earlier said
sits gathering dust[1] on top of 1968 LSJ
[1] where it will continue to sit until my library gets handed over to the next generation.
The LSJ is in need of an update that incorporates the supplement and corrects the digitization. It could use a new typeface, and perhaps more standardization regarding accidence.
Removing Victorian language features is not very high on my list of requests. It’s just something that modern book editors like to get rid of, sort of like the Taliban and ancient temples.
