Introducing Myself

Textkit Community Open Board
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Hi everyone!

Thanks for letting me sign up on here. A little background info:

I’ve been wanting to learn Latin for about 2ish years from a linguistics interest that was fostered during my time at university, and thankfully my degree is over and I now have (some!) free time to actually dive into this interesting language.

Primarily, I want to use it for access to the Medieval canon, but also as a tool to springboard into other languages / rummage around throughout history and see what other people have left behind; exploration is a big thing for me.

To a lesser extent, I also have an interest in biblical Greek, but more for exploring both:

  1. The Septuagint, which is not really a part of Western Christianity (Masoretic preferences going back to Jerome)
  2. Exploring the Byzantine world, which may not have many texts remaining compared to Latin but is still a “forgotten” chapter in history compared to western sources.
    Strangely, I don’t have much of an interest in ancient Greek :slight_smile:

I also love epigraphy; I have found many Latin mottos / quotations in my country from amateur tourism, so I will close the post with one; I forget where it is from, as I am just now getting into books again.

Cantantes licet usque minus
via taedet eamus

Let us march on singing ever
The road will tire us less.

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Welcome to Texkit!

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Welcome!

  1. The Septuagint, which is not really a part of Western Christianity (Masoretic preferences going back to Jerome)

Jerome did try and push for Masoretic supremacy, but the Septuagint was the standard model of the Old Testament for most of Western Christendom’s history, through, ironically, the medium of Jerome’s Latin translation of it in the Vulgate.

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Oh, I didn’t know that. Do you have any online blogs / books / resources you can recommend on learning more about the relationship between the Septuagint and Western Christianity?

My knowledge is very linear; I assumed “Always Septuagint in the west until Jerome changed it”, which is probably wrong.

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Also through the medium of the NT itself which quoted from the LXX frequently. Our habit of gluing the Hebrew OT to the Greek NT is anachronistic, as is the prejudice of modern Protestants against the Greek books of the OT (the “apocrypha”), apparently for reasons of misplaced language snobbery.