Kata Markon

["Jack Kilmon" <jkilmon AT historian.net>]

Jack:
> >It is also difficult for me to envision Mark, on the
> >basis of his Koine grammar and style, having rewritten
> >Homeric prose in Attic.
Jeff:
> I'll have to read this review when I get a moment, but you have me
> scratching my head. Based on your statement, the author you are
criticizing
> seems to hold the position that Homer was prose (it is verse), and that
> Mark wrote in Attic Greek (as sure as I'm sitting here, he didn't do
that)?
> This seems like too fundamental an error to be true. No doubt I should
quit
> nattering on here and go read the review....

No, the author (of the review) quotes MacDonald that students (of Greek)
were
required to rewrite passages of Homer in prose.  Although this may be true
for
a classical education in the West, it is very problematic in the Eastern
Roman provinces,
particularly in 1st century Palestine.  This is, IMO, demonstrated by the
colloquial
and regional aspects of Koine, sometimes to the point of being patois.

My point was that I do nor believe Mark's Koine reflects a much greater
competence in Classical Greek sufficient to have re-written Homeric passages
in prose
and to have been a development step for Koine.

Reading the review yet only cursorily, I also see exemplars of Homeric
"borrowings"
that are pregnantly obvious for Middle Eastern Aramaic idiom.  I am trying
hard not
to prejudice myself against this thesis with just a quick flip of the pages
on a busy
day and am only relating my first blush sense...which so far seems to be
that I could
also do the same exercise between "War and Peace" and the book of Exodus.

Jack


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______________________________________________

taybutheh d'maran yeshua masheecha am kulkon

Jack Kilmon
North Hollywood, Ca.
jkilmon AT historian.net

http://www.historian.net

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