It's All Greek to Me
a sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Tim W. Jensen
at the Second Congregational Meeting House
on Nantucket Island, Sunday June 20, 2003
***
I suspected when I was nineteen that I didn't have what it takes to be a good physician. But my intuition wasn't confirmed for another five years, when I enrolled in Greek Three through the Classics Department at Harvard University. Lewis Thomas would have been pleased with the Divinity School curriculum. We had our choice of five "languages of theological scholarship:" theological German, theological French, Latin, Hebrew, or Greek. It was a tough decision. My mother and my aunt, proud of their Jewish heritage, encouraged me to try Hebrew. But I am suspicious of languages without vowels. French or German might have proven the least difficult alternatives. But I felt little desire to spend a year puzzling through the confusing theologies of Jean Calvin or Martin Luther just to prove to an examiner that I could do it. Latin held a strong appeal for me. But Latin's charms seemed pale when compared to the rich and manifold possibilities of Greek: the language, not only of the New Testament, but of Plato and Aristotle, Euripides, Sophocles, Heroditus, Marcus Aurelius.... And when I learned that even educated Romans had prefered Greek to their native tongue, my mind was made up.
My flirtation with Greek began innocently enough with Greek One: "Elementary Koine." I suppose I should explain that although there are dozens of dialects of Greek, only three, other than modern, are ordinarily taught today: Homeric, the dialect of the Iliad and the Oddessy; Classical Attic, the dialect spoken in Athens during the Golden Age of Pericles, the language of Plato and Socrates; and finally Koine or "common" Greek, a derivative of Attic which was spread throughout the Mediterranean world by Alexander the Great, and which is the dialect of the New Testament. We began by learning the Alphabet -- the real Alphabet -- which until that time I had known only from the front doors of fraternities and sororities, and by spring were slowly and cautiously making our way through the Euangelion Kata Markon, the "Good News According to Mark." I was far from being the best student in the class, but I did manage to struggle along at a respectable "B" pace.
That summer I registered for an intensive seminar in Intermediate Koine, and was nearly handed my head on a platter. After a full day's work as a research assistant at the Massachusetts Historical Society, where I inventoried 17th century Boston Church records, I would repair to the Mug & Muffin restaurant in Harvard Square, consume large quantities of coffee, and prepare for my dreaded evening rendezvous with the Apostolic Fathers. We had been promised a year's worth of Greek in a period of eight weeks. I just squeaked through with a "Gentleman's C" -- in those days they still existed at Harvard -- but only after several intense, all-night review sessions with a doctoral student in New Testament studies.
At this point in my career as a classical scholar, wisdom and common sense would have dictated that I repeat Greek Two at a more leisurely pace, mastering at my own speed the subtleties of the Optative mood and the Genitive Absolute which had raced past me during those humid summer months in Cambridge. But I was impatient for Plato, and so it came to pass that I enrolled in Greek Three.
At mid-terms my professor told me not to worry -- he was only concerned with how much we knew at the end of the semester. When classes let out in December, I knew that I had a month in which to master the eloquence of Socrates' Defense of his life before the Athenian jury. My vocabulary cards now numbered in the thousands. The slim green volume from the Loeb Classical Library was my constant companion; I would even read it on the subway, covering the English translation with my hand and then checking my own against it. With each passing day my anxiety increased. I discovered the joys and merits of antacid tablets. I re-read my dog-eared copy of John Jay Osborne's wonderful novel The Paper Chase (especially the part where Hart and Ford lock themselves in a hotel room for a week studying for their final exams), and of course I prayed -- prayed for a miracle. On the morning of the exam I trudged through the snow in Harvard Yard, my eyes heavy with lack of sleep, the brisk West wind slapping me awake. I found a seat in the large examination room, and waited for the proctors to distribute the exams. My classmates joked nervously around me. When the test arrived I glanced at the first page, and then quickly thumbed through all eight pages to make certain I was not mistaken. It took me about five minutes to realize that I had actually failed Greek Three.
This was not my first experience with failure, nor has it been my last. When I was sixteen I somehow managed to fail my driver's license test three times. In two years of High School Junior Varsity football my team boasted a combined record of 0-12-2; let me tell you, those two ties felt like great moral victories for us. I have been turned down for jobs that I had wanted with all my heart; I have felt promising relationships go sour, and slip through my fingers.
But failing Greek was a “liminal” experience for me. When I realized I had finally failed Greek Three, the emotion was not one of disappointment, but of relief. Although it may sound trite, it was as though a tremendous weight had been lifted from my head, and for the first time in months, I could relax.
Unfortunately, there is a rule at Harvard University that anyone who shows up for an exam must remain in the room for an hour and a half before leaving. I spent that time translating as much of the exam as I was able, in the cavalier hope that perhaps somewhere in my subconscious mind existed just enough Greek to be worthy of a "D." There didn't. Ninety minutes passed very quickly; I turned in my test, and walked home a free human being. My career as a classical scholar was over.
Perhaps you've heard it said that the fear of a thing is often worse than the thing itself. This was certainly true of my experience with Greek. In fact, there were several things I learned from my study of Greek that were not part of the formal curriculum, but which have served me far better over the years than anything that was.
The first thing I learned was the real meaning of the word hubris. Nowadays we tend to associate the notion of hubris with the idea of misplaced pride; but this is only part of the concept. Hubris means insolence, outrage, wanton recklessness and disrespect; and it was a criminal offense in ancient Athens, roughly equivalent to today's "lewd and lascivious conduct." But it was also a philosophical concept, which refered to the ontological and metaphysical state of being "too big for one's britches." It is good to be proud of things that are important. Pride makes for quality, excellence, and virtue, (all things which the Greeks admired). But it was hubris for me to enroll in Greek Three after my narrow escape from the clutches of Greek Two. Misplaced pride had something to do with it: I was infatuated with the idea of knowing Socrates in his own tongue, or doing free-wheeling, off-the-cuff exegesis of the Greek New Testament at parties; I was seduced by the idea of being a classical scholar. But mostly it was my insolent disregard for my own limitations which led me in over my head, and then swept me out to sea.
And then I learned to differentiate between the Alpha and the Omega. Herodotus once wrote that the bitterest sorrow a human being can know is to aspire to do much, and to accomplish nothing. But it seems to me even a greater tragedy to aspire to do much, to achieve it, and then to discover that it was not worth doing. And there are other variations on this theme we can explore. What about the person who aspires to do nothing, who simply goes along with the crowd, and then discovers they have been the unwitting pawn in someone else's cruel or evil aspiration? Or the person who is denied the opportunity to even develop their aspirations, on account of some arbitrary restriction or capricious prejudice? Or even the person who naively aspires to do more than they are able, and then is destroyed in the futile effort to achieve it?
American folklore is full of stories about ambitious young men, and more recently, young women, who have risen from rags to riches through force of will and boundless energy, who work smarter and harder, who refuse to quit or accept failure, who are "winners" rather than "losers." But this is because America is what one might think of as an "Alpha" culture, constantly standing at the threshold of some brave new enterprise, looking to the future with the confident expectation that we will overcome whatever obstacles stand in our way. The future is plastic; we think nothing of driving past a vacant lot we haven't seen in, say, six months, and discovering that an entire shopping center has sprung up while we've been busy with other things.
But Classical Antiquity was, for the most part, what one might think of as an "Omega" culture, which saw itself not as standing at the apex of history, but rather in its waning moments. The Greek countryside was cluttered with ancient shrines and temples whose origins were lost in mythological obscurity -- no one knew who had built them, yet they had endured while their creators had passed away. The limits of the flesh were not a barrier to be transcended by Force of Will; rather, "the body was a tomb" which imprisoned a fallen spirit.
Socrates faced his death with the strong conviction and sense of confidence that what he was doing was philosophically correct; and centuries later, his example became an important reference for Christians attempting to explain the significance of the crucifixion to a Greek-thinking world. It was no great miracle that Jesus claimed to be the Son of God; was not Hercules the son of Zeus? It was no big deal that he had walked on water and cast out demons; hundreds of others had claimed to do the same. A good exorcist would even make the demons do tricks for the audience first. And did not Osiris rise annually from the dead?
What impressed the Greeks and Romans about Christianity was its compassion, and the fact that Jesus, like Socrates, had gone voluntarily to a painful execution as a common criminal rather than compromise the integrity of his beliefs. Most of the subtlety of Christian theology comes from Greek (the language of philosophy, the “love of wisdom”); and most of the problems from attempting to translate into Latin, (a language of lawyers and soldiers and engineers). Sin, for example, is not disobedience, but rather hamartano -- to "miss the target," to be "aimless" or “misdirected.” Grace is not a reward, but charis -- charity, a freely given gift. To repent is not to feel guilty, it is metanoia -- to "transform one's mind" (just as metamorphosis is to transform one’s shape). And faith -- pistis -- is not belief, but trust, a confidence in the validity of living one's life according to an unseen higher principle.
I did not need to study Greek in order to learn these things -- I probably could have discovered them in any halfway decent concordance. I could have found out for myself that "the Kingdom of God" is not a place, but rather refers to "the reign of the divine," and exists "among us." It might have been a little more difficult, perhaps, to realize that "Eternal Life" need not necessarily refer to a life-span which lasts forever, but might just as accurately describe a life-style which is grounded in a profound sense of the ultimate. But what I ultimately took away from my study of Greek was the sense that these were Omega values, and that one must "transform one's mind" in order to make sense of them in an Alpha-based, achievement oriented world. By any standard of the Alpha world, I was a failure, a loser. I was about as far away from the A-team as one can possibly get. But by the standards of the Omega world, I had freed my spirit from the prison of the flesh, had done my time in the belly of the fish, and had been spit forth upon the sand a changed human being, purged of the arrogant pride which had momentarily led me astray.
You have heard it told how I finished my study of Greek by failing the final examination for Greek Three in January of 1981. But what I have yet to mention is that the study of Greek was not quite finished with me. You see, I still had to sit before an examiner from the Divinity school and demonstrate a satisfactory reading knowledge of an approved language of theological scholarship. And so it came to pass that after a reasonable interval of recuperation, I returned to my flash cards and my Greek New Testament, and diligently reviewed the noun declensions and verb paradigms that had kicked me in the head for the last year and a half. It was not easy to get back up on the horse again. But here I am, all matriculated and ordained, so you can guess the final outcome. And every once in awhile I will doodle the Greek alphabet while talking on the telephone or attending a tedious meeting, and reflect back upon who dragged whom around the walls of what. Or I will recall with some irony that I can justly claim to have forgotten more Greek than most folks would ever care to know. And every now and again I will recall an aphorism still lingering in memory from my painful struggle for "reading knowledge."
Things like:
μακαριοι οι πεινωντεs και διψωντεs την δικαιοσυνην οτι αυτοι χορτασθσονται
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be made full."
Or....
ο δε ανεξεταστοs βιοs ου βιωτοs ανθρωπω
"For the unexamined life is not worth living for a human being."
Or even:
και γνωσεσθε την αλνθειαν και η αληθεια ελευθερωσει υμαs
"And you will know the truth, and the truth will free you."
Strange sounding words from a time long, long ago. But lessons, nonetheless, that we can understand in any language.
at the Second Congregational Meeting House
on Nantucket Island, Sunday June 20, 2003
***
I suspected when I was nineteen that I didn't have what it takes to be a good physician. But my intuition wasn't confirmed for another five years, when I enrolled in Greek Three through the Classics Department at Harvard University. Lewis Thomas would have been pleased with the Divinity School curriculum. We had our choice of five "languages of theological scholarship:" theological German, theological French, Latin, Hebrew, or Greek. It was a tough decision. My mother and my aunt, proud of their Jewish heritage, encouraged me to try Hebrew. But I am suspicious of languages without vowels. French or German might have proven the least difficult alternatives. But I felt little desire to spend a year puzzling through the confusing theologies of Jean Calvin or Martin Luther just to prove to an examiner that I could do it. Latin held a strong appeal for me. But Latin's charms seemed pale when compared to the rich and manifold possibilities of Greek: the language, not only of the New Testament, but of Plato and Aristotle, Euripides, Sophocles, Heroditus, Marcus Aurelius.... And when I learned that even educated Romans had prefered Greek to their native tongue, my mind was made up.
My flirtation with Greek began innocently enough with Greek One: "Elementary Koine." I suppose I should explain that although there are dozens of dialects of Greek, only three, other than modern, are ordinarily taught today: Homeric, the dialect of the Iliad and the Oddessy; Classical Attic, the dialect spoken in Athens during the Golden Age of Pericles, the language of Plato and Socrates; and finally Koine or "common" Greek, a derivative of Attic which was spread throughout the Mediterranean world by Alexander the Great, and which is the dialect of the New Testament. We began by learning the Alphabet -- the real Alphabet -- which until that time I had known only from the front doors of fraternities and sororities, and by spring were slowly and cautiously making our way through the Euangelion Kata Markon, the "Good News According to Mark." I was far from being the best student in the class, but I did manage to struggle along at a respectable "B" pace.
That summer I registered for an intensive seminar in Intermediate Koine, and was nearly handed my head on a platter. After a full day's work as a research assistant at the Massachusetts Historical Society, where I inventoried 17th century Boston Church records, I would repair to the Mug & Muffin restaurant in Harvard Square, consume large quantities of coffee, and prepare for my dreaded evening rendezvous with the Apostolic Fathers. We had been promised a year's worth of Greek in a period of eight weeks. I just squeaked through with a "Gentleman's C" -- in those days they still existed at Harvard -- but only after several intense, all-night review sessions with a doctoral student in New Testament studies.
At this point in my career as a classical scholar, wisdom and common sense would have dictated that I repeat Greek Two at a more leisurely pace, mastering at my own speed the subtleties of the Optative mood and the Genitive Absolute which had raced past me during those humid summer months in Cambridge. But I was impatient for Plato, and so it came to pass that I enrolled in Greek Three.
At mid-terms my professor told me not to worry -- he was only concerned with how much we knew at the end of the semester. When classes let out in December, I knew that I had a month in which to master the eloquence of Socrates' Defense of his life before the Athenian jury. My vocabulary cards now numbered in the thousands. The slim green volume from the Loeb Classical Library was my constant companion; I would even read it on the subway, covering the English translation with my hand and then checking my own against it. With each passing day my anxiety increased. I discovered the joys and merits of antacid tablets. I re-read my dog-eared copy of John Jay Osborne's wonderful novel The Paper Chase (especially the part where Hart and Ford lock themselves in a hotel room for a week studying for their final exams), and of course I prayed -- prayed for a miracle. On the morning of the exam I trudged through the snow in Harvard Yard, my eyes heavy with lack of sleep, the brisk West wind slapping me awake. I found a seat in the large examination room, and waited for the proctors to distribute the exams. My classmates joked nervously around me. When the test arrived I glanced at the first page, and then quickly thumbed through all eight pages to make certain I was not mistaken. It took me about five minutes to realize that I had actually failed Greek Three.
This was not my first experience with failure, nor has it been my last. When I was sixteen I somehow managed to fail my driver's license test three times. In two years of High School Junior Varsity football my team boasted a combined record of 0-12-2; let me tell you, those two ties felt like great moral victories for us. I have been turned down for jobs that I had wanted with all my heart; I have felt promising relationships go sour, and slip through my fingers.
But failing Greek was a “liminal” experience for me. When I realized I had finally failed Greek Three, the emotion was not one of disappointment, but of relief. Although it may sound trite, it was as though a tremendous weight had been lifted from my head, and for the first time in months, I could relax.
Unfortunately, there is a rule at Harvard University that anyone who shows up for an exam must remain in the room for an hour and a half before leaving. I spent that time translating as much of the exam as I was able, in the cavalier hope that perhaps somewhere in my subconscious mind existed just enough Greek to be worthy of a "D." There didn't. Ninety minutes passed very quickly; I turned in my test, and walked home a free human being. My career as a classical scholar was over.
Perhaps you've heard it said that the fear of a thing is often worse than the thing itself. This was certainly true of my experience with Greek. In fact, there were several things I learned from my study of Greek that were not part of the formal curriculum, but which have served me far better over the years than anything that was.
The first thing I learned was the real meaning of the word hubris. Nowadays we tend to associate the notion of hubris with the idea of misplaced pride; but this is only part of the concept. Hubris means insolence, outrage, wanton recklessness and disrespect; and it was a criminal offense in ancient Athens, roughly equivalent to today's "lewd and lascivious conduct." But it was also a philosophical concept, which refered to the ontological and metaphysical state of being "too big for one's britches." It is good to be proud of things that are important. Pride makes for quality, excellence, and virtue, (all things which the Greeks admired). But it was hubris for me to enroll in Greek Three after my narrow escape from the clutches of Greek Two. Misplaced pride had something to do with it: I was infatuated with the idea of knowing Socrates in his own tongue, or doing free-wheeling, off-the-cuff exegesis of the Greek New Testament at parties; I was seduced by the idea of being a classical scholar. But mostly it was my insolent disregard for my own limitations which led me in over my head, and then swept me out to sea.
And then I learned to differentiate between the Alpha and the Omega. Herodotus once wrote that the bitterest sorrow a human being can know is to aspire to do much, and to accomplish nothing. But it seems to me even a greater tragedy to aspire to do much, to achieve it, and then to discover that it was not worth doing. And there are other variations on this theme we can explore. What about the person who aspires to do nothing, who simply goes along with the crowd, and then discovers they have been the unwitting pawn in someone else's cruel or evil aspiration? Or the person who is denied the opportunity to even develop their aspirations, on account of some arbitrary restriction or capricious prejudice? Or even the person who naively aspires to do more than they are able, and then is destroyed in the futile effort to achieve it?
American folklore is full of stories about ambitious young men, and more recently, young women, who have risen from rags to riches through force of will and boundless energy, who work smarter and harder, who refuse to quit or accept failure, who are "winners" rather than "losers." But this is because America is what one might think of as an "Alpha" culture, constantly standing at the threshold of some brave new enterprise, looking to the future with the confident expectation that we will overcome whatever obstacles stand in our way. The future is plastic; we think nothing of driving past a vacant lot we haven't seen in, say, six months, and discovering that an entire shopping center has sprung up while we've been busy with other things.
But Classical Antiquity was, for the most part, what one might think of as an "Omega" culture, which saw itself not as standing at the apex of history, but rather in its waning moments. The Greek countryside was cluttered with ancient shrines and temples whose origins were lost in mythological obscurity -- no one knew who had built them, yet they had endured while their creators had passed away. The limits of the flesh were not a barrier to be transcended by Force of Will; rather, "the body was a tomb" which imprisoned a fallen spirit.
Socrates faced his death with the strong conviction and sense of confidence that what he was doing was philosophically correct; and centuries later, his example became an important reference for Christians attempting to explain the significance of the crucifixion to a Greek-thinking world. It was no great miracle that Jesus claimed to be the Son of God; was not Hercules the son of Zeus? It was no big deal that he had walked on water and cast out demons; hundreds of others had claimed to do the same. A good exorcist would even make the demons do tricks for the audience first. And did not Osiris rise annually from the dead?
What impressed the Greeks and Romans about Christianity was its compassion, and the fact that Jesus, like Socrates, had gone voluntarily to a painful execution as a common criminal rather than compromise the integrity of his beliefs. Most of the subtlety of Christian theology comes from Greek (the language of philosophy, the “love of wisdom”); and most of the problems from attempting to translate into Latin, (a language of lawyers and soldiers and engineers). Sin, for example, is not disobedience, but rather hamartano -- to "miss the target," to be "aimless" or “misdirected.” Grace is not a reward, but charis -- charity, a freely given gift. To repent is not to feel guilty, it is metanoia -- to "transform one's mind" (just as metamorphosis is to transform one’s shape). And faith -- pistis -- is not belief, but trust, a confidence in the validity of living one's life according to an unseen higher principle.
I did not need to study Greek in order to learn these things -- I probably could have discovered them in any halfway decent concordance. I could have found out for myself that "the Kingdom of God" is not a place, but rather refers to "the reign of the divine," and exists "among us." It might have been a little more difficult, perhaps, to realize that "Eternal Life" need not necessarily refer to a life-span which lasts forever, but might just as accurately describe a life-style which is grounded in a profound sense of the ultimate. But what I ultimately took away from my study of Greek was the sense that these were Omega values, and that one must "transform one's mind" in order to make sense of them in an Alpha-based, achievement oriented world. By any standard of the Alpha world, I was a failure, a loser. I was about as far away from the A-team as one can possibly get. But by the standards of the Omega world, I had freed my spirit from the prison of the flesh, had done my time in the belly of the fish, and had been spit forth upon the sand a changed human being, purged of the arrogant pride which had momentarily led me astray.
You have heard it told how I finished my study of Greek by failing the final examination for Greek Three in January of 1981. But what I have yet to mention is that the study of Greek was not quite finished with me. You see, I still had to sit before an examiner from the Divinity school and demonstrate a satisfactory reading knowledge of an approved language of theological scholarship. And so it came to pass that after a reasonable interval of recuperation, I returned to my flash cards and my Greek New Testament, and diligently reviewed the noun declensions and verb paradigms that had kicked me in the head for the last year and a half. It was not easy to get back up on the horse again. But here I am, all matriculated and ordained, so you can guess the final outcome. And every once in awhile I will doodle the Greek alphabet while talking on the telephone or attending a tedious meeting, and reflect back upon who dragged whom around the walls of what. Or I will recall with some irony that I can justly claim to have forgotten more Greek than most folks would ever care to know. And every now and again I will recall an aphorism still lingering in memory from my painful struggle for "reading knowledge."
Things like:
μακαριοι οι πεινωντεs και διψωντεs την δικαιοσυνην οτι αυτοι χορτασθσονται
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be made full."
Or....
ο δε ανεξεταστοs βιοs ου βιωτοs ανθρωπω
"For the unexamined life is not worth living for a human being."
Or even:
και γνωσεσθε την αλνθειαν και η αληθεια ελευθερωσει υμαs
"And you will know the truth, and the truth will free you."
Strange sounding words from a time long, long ago. But lessons, nonetheless, that we can understand in any language.
posted by The Eclectic Cleric at 7:16 PM
