S.C.Carlson

If your interest is more in patristics, then French would be helpful (and to a lesser extent, Italian).

Stephen

Julian

I used to be fluent in French and with a few months of study could probably recover it, I suppose. What, besides the obvious Sources chrétiennes, is notable in French?

Julian

Peter Kirby

Well, I made it through the first chapter of Wheelock's Latin on verbs. :grin:

"Tastes just like Spanish!"

--
Peter Kirby

Roger Pearse

I suppose I'm quite ambivalent on this, in a way. If we can't get information unless we can read a text in the original language, then we're lost -- many ancient texts are only preserved in ancient translations. I think we all know that all of the information contained in the average sentence is perfectly preserved if you translate it, and probably so in 99% of these.

Similarly I would resist any elitism of the professionally educated -- antiquity and the classics are for everyone, and I don't much like the approach of someone who sneers at an enthusiast for the Odyssey on the grounds that he doesn't know what the Greek for "wine-dark sea" is. We've all met the latter sort of snob, and I don't find them attractive or useful.

But ...

On the other hand, I would feel fairly uneasy about a degree-level study of the classics that relied purely on English translations. You miss things, if you can't read it in the original; and you can read things into a text which are simply not present in the original, if you're not careful.

Likewise if someone started talking about a Latin text, I would always prefer to see the Latin rather than someone's English translation -- still more so French -- since I don't like relying on someone else's translation. Indeed at the moment I myself am having a go at learning Syriac, in part because I find myself disadvantaged in not knowing this language when working with English translations of these texts. None of us want a translation, if we can read the original, do we?

So my vote is in the ambivalent category. Yes, you can perfectly well do nearly everything in translation. But... it would be better to have a command of the original languages. What I would not endorse is "But when I asked him the pluperfect of confiteor, the fool didn't know!"

All the best,

Roger Pearse

davidbach

I am considering writing to a precher in a rural newspaper that we have an interest in. I suspect he does not have much if any Latin, never mind Greek or Hebrew.

Surely, any real understanding not only requires the languages, but also an understanding of history and social norms of the period.

David.

arricchio

I would say that ancient languages are absolutely vital if you are age 20 and just starting out. Us old fogies have a devil of a time learning new languages. I started Latin at age 47. Made it all the way through Wheelock. Damn thing nearly killed me. Now at age 50, guess how much I remember.

Errr.....Ummm....what's Latin for "nothing"

Malachi151

I would say that knowledge of the history and culture is many times more important than knowledge of the language. (coming from someone who only speaks English)

Joan of Bark

Malachi, are you saying then that it is MORE important to understand the history and rely on a modern translation than the other way around because even a perfect knowledge of a classical language fails to address the problem of the changing definitions and connotations of words ...?

youngalexander

I have sed it before, and I shall say it again - even tho it was a bit of a typo!

I think you up to something PK.

PhilosopherJay

I would suggest that rather than a study of any particular language, a study of theories of language is more important. Languages are constantly evolving and changing over time and place. Separate a group of people who speak the same language for 200 years and they will have developed separate languages over that period of time. The Greek in the Iliad is not the Greek of Plato which is not the Greek of Lucian.

One also has to understand that words are polysemous. They may not only hold many different meanings but even directly contradictorary meanings. In certain contexts (for example, when used by Mae West or Michael Jackson) the word "bad" can mean "good". Words can also pick up and lose connotations and references over short periods of time. The word "Soviet" meaning worker's council in 1917 did not have the same connotations in 1924 when the Soviet Union came into existence or 1991 when the Soviet Union dissolved as a state/country.

Even the greatest expert in 1st Century Greek will have to recreate the language based on less than 1% of the actual texts of that period. How certain can she/he be that the recreation is accurate? And the person who knows 1st century Greek well may have little understanding of 1st Century Aramaic, which may have played an important role in forming parts of the NT text.

There are substantial problems with the differences between spoken and written communication. Sarcasm is easier to communicate through a change of voice and facial expression than in writing. Is Pilote being sarcastic when he says, "What is truth?" Or is it a set-up line for Jesus? Or is this the beginning of a serious discussion of the nature of truth that has been expunged.

Philogists themselves are notorious for their trivial disputes about words. One philologist will point to a letter, syllable or sound and see its derivation in one
way and another will see its derivation another way.

Without understanding these and a multitude of other problems with languages, the learning of ancient Greek and Latin could be a meaningless exercise, especially when so many (and so varied) translations into modern languages are so easily available.

This said, I would add that in certain ways reading a text in the original language does appear helpful in certain respects. Last year when I read the gospel of Mark in Greek for the first time, I noticed that the translators would tend to use many different terms where Mark had repeatedly used only one term. It seemed to me that the translators had tended to enrich Mark's language whenever possible. I found this a helpful insight. Otherwise, I found it simply fun and quite pleasurable, but it added little to my understanding of many issues related to the text. For example, I still could not determine if Mark was written in 73 or 173 C.E.

Warmly,

Jay Raskin