13 replies to this topic

[stjacks]

Dear Accordance,

I would love if you would eventually include modules of other Hellenistic literature withe similiar tagged Greek and English translation packages like the Philo, Early Church Fathers, and Josephus modules. That would be great! Many scholars tend to read the Greco-Roman literature along with and in order to better understand biblical texts, particularly the NT.

Some I would like to see for starters would be, Homer's works, Ovid, Plato, Plutarch, Aristides, Dio Chrysostom, Suetonius, Diogenes, Aesop, Aristotle, Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, Euripedes, Xenophon.

What do you think about this?

[DanG]

As a pastor, I have zero interest in that type of resources and could think of 1000 other books that would be more helpful to me. Accordance likes to remind us of their limited resources for producing new modules and I, for one, would like to see them pursue modules helpful to pastors as opposed to scholars. (Sure, I realize there are some modules helpful to both.)

[D.S.Moses Nickerson]

As a pastor, I have zero interest in that type of resources and could think of 1000 other books that would be more helpful to me. Accordance likes to remind us of their limited resources for producing new modules and I, for one, would like to see them pursue modules helpful to pastors as opposed to scholars. (Sure, I realize there are some modules helpful to both.)

I see great use for both, particularly of the early Greek Fathers. I sympathize deeply with Dan, and I think that if I absolutely had to choose between the two I would prefer more works of more immediate pastoral service, commentaries and similar works. However, as a hopeful pastor-scholar, I abhor the thought that genuine pastoral love and shepherding should be divorced from deep Scriptural understanding. As a result, the thought of having more Koine Greek to use to learn to know my Bible better is also quite attractive. (@stjacks, several of the requests seem diachronically interesting for morphology studies (Aristotle, Homer, Plato et al), but pretty much any Greek before 324 BC will be relatively useless for any study of the Koine period beyond such historical curiosity. To do so would be something akin to studying Chaucer to shed light on Steven King's syntax. Xenophon is probably your earliest semi-reliable source for Greek of similar synchronic character to the NT; your upper end will be much fuzzier because of the preservation of ecclesiastical Greek even up to today. Also Ovid wrote in Latin.)

Perhaps I might recommend something of a hierarchy? I know that Logos is developing a project for the first large chunk of the Greek Patristics in some sort of a lemmatized module. Something similar could be helpful to both a pastor and a scholar. For the scholar it would provide close-to-biblical Greek to study and compare with GNT syntax, and for the pastor a powerful early Christian commentary on Scripture capable of being mined for scriptural citations and usages from the earliest of Fathers with simple word searches. There are plenty of early Christian works that have both a pastoral character and potential for scholarly use; the suggestion of Chrisostom's works in particular comes to mind. Perhaps Accordance is thinking along the same lines, having released modules that provide both Biblical elucidation as well as linguistic canon fodder such as the "Apologists" module and the "Apostolic Fathers," representing much of the earliest Christian works of the first and second century. Here's to hoping for more without undermining the pastoral usages of Accordance!

[mikes]

It used to be that you could subscribe to a classics CD (Thesaurus Linguae Graecae) that you could then import texts into accordance via a special addon/module... I don't know if that option is still available (I know that new CD subscriptions are not easily available). There is also the very free, and even richer free website for the Perseus project here:
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/
The sad part, is that unless you're at an institution that has the CD subscription specifically, and you have access to the CD, there's no chance you can use these texts in Accordance. In turn, I use the Perseus web site frequently.

I did some work in the classics while in college, and definitely see the value in NT studies both for greek as well as historical background. Soooo much of western culture and even current (incorrect IMHO) christian belief is based on Plato's views of spirit, "heaven" and right living. The use of what we translate as righteousness in the church is also an important topic to Plato as well.

If you want to understand the early church, understanding Artistotle's politics, rhetoric and ethics are really required reading. Not really my opinion, you'll hear this from others much better educated.

Putting all these greek texts in a cross searchable form in accordance (think the linking commands from that last podcast) would provide a richer understanding of how Paul spoke on many different levels to the hellenic culture of his day, and a view into how syncretism crept in(from both perspectives).


I would very much like to see the ability to import Perseus project texts into Accordance. I'd be willing to do work on my own if I could just import the text and search it with other greek texts in accordance!

[D.S.Moses Nickerson]

I did some work in the classics while in college, and definitely see the value in NT studies both for greek as well as historical background. Soooo much of western culture and even current (incorrect IMHO) christian belief is based on Plato's views of spirit, "heaven" and right living. The use of what we translate as righteousness in the church is also an important topic to Plato as well.

If you want to understand the early church, understanding Artistotle's politics, rhetoric and ethics are really required reading. Not really my opinion, you'll hear this from others much better educated...

I would very much like to see the ability to import Perseus project texts into Accordance. I'd be willing to do work on my own if I could just import the text and search it with other greek texts in accordance!

I hope this isn't too far off the thread's topic, but I would question whether Aristotle is required reading for understanding the early church. I hold a Rhetoric BA and have read extensively in the classical period of Greek thought; recently, I picked up Justin Martyr and a few other second century authors who are of the most maligned for their syncretism and was rather amazed to find that they were rather understandable in their own right. From my perspective I could see where Justin used an Aristotelian argument or two, or bolstered his apologetics with a bit of Greek philosophy (or mythology). However, I was very intrigued that his writing was not technical but rather clear to the average joe, explaining terms and generally striving to communicate. In fact by and large he tended to use these external sources as audience adaptation tools, appealing for instance to Greek mythology to show that it was not unreasonable to conceive of a God's incarnation or His death on behalf of others.

Many levy similar claims, necessitating extensive context, against scripture itself. Perhaps John was influenced by Heraclitus or Philo, or Paul by a background in platonism. Though I really have no trouble with them gleaning from their culture and using culture to communicate the gospel with as little hindrance as possible, I am always amazed at how kind God has been to provide propositional truth that is clear at face value (even if sometimes difficult to understand in parts). In using someone's personality and previous influences, He breathes out truth in an understandable form. An understanding of Plato and rabbinic thought of the day may make Paul come alive through his cultural context in vivid color, yet Scripture's content is clear, available to the plowman as well as the classical scholar. The God who designed all those types of men spoke it for all of them. On the more human side of things, people write to be understood. They adapt their content to their audiences even subconsciously so that the hearers will receive the message without needing an encyclopedic knowledge of related works to do so.

Thus to pull all this back to the original point of the thread; I would value more contextual literature primarily for linguistic comparison and secondarily for cultural context and rhetorical color. Furthermore, I would love to see some sort of ability to import previously lemmatized texts from publicly available sources like Perseus. Such a move would be profoundly helpful to anyone, regardless of their interest in extra-biblical Greek.

Edited by D.S.Moses Nickerson, 05 April 2010 - 04:38 PM.

[mikes]

Many levy similar claims, necessitating extensive context, against scripture itself.

I never said anything about scripture.

[R. Mansfield]

Dear Accordance,

I would love if you would eventually include modules of other Hellenistic literature withe similiar tagged Greek and English translation packages like the Philo, Early Church Fathers, and Josephus modules. That would be great! Many scholars tend to read the Greco-Roman literature along with and in order to better understand biblical texts, particularly the NT.

Some I would like to see for starters would be, Homer's works, Ovid, Plato, Plutarch, Aristides, Dio Chrysostom, Suetonius, Diogenes, Aesop, Aristotle, Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, Euripedes, Xenophon.

What do you think about this?

I love the Loeb Classical Library and own quite a few volumes. I have access to all the old TLG cd-rom files, so this is some consolation, but I admit a full Loeb set with English translations in Accordance would be nice. Realistically, I'm doubtful we'll ever see the Loeb set in Accordance, although it would be nice to have the Loeb English translations of Josephus and Philo as I've found them somewhat superior to the older English translations currently in Accordance.

[D.S.Moses Nickerson]

I never said anything about scripture.

My apologies. I think I probably read in a bit of meaning to your use of "the early church," thinking more of the New Testament church.

[Mads Christensen]

If I may add my opinion as a student of classics to this somewhat old thread…

The Loeb-editions are great, but they are as a rule meant to be small "self-contained" editions, for the amateur-scholar, who won't just accept a translation blindly and for the scholar reading outside his area of expertise. You can pick up a volume and read it on the train or in the garden and you don't really need to bring commentaries or dictionaries.

The problem with the idea of Loeb-volumes in Accordance is that I don't think that it would be worth the effort with Homer, Plato or similar greeks. You would for one thing still need to consult a critical edition such as a OCT or better for serious scholarly work and this would be a problem for greek text studies. Nor would the general reader gain much with an Accordance-edition since Homer would stand very isolated from the other, biblical resources and the linking possibilities would be very limited. And every reader would of course lose the great and intended portability of the Loeb-Homer.

A classical resource that I think Accordance should have is the Mather/Hewitt edition of Anabasis by Xenophon, whom thread-starter mentioned. This is not a critical edition but a great book for anyone not fluent in greek. The book gives you an introduction, the greek text with lots of black and white illustrations, vocabulary and very full commentary (Note that no translation is included: It should not be necessary!). Splitting this into several modules would make it a great Accordance experience, and the Anabasis should for an number of reasons be of interest to the average Accordance user with some exposure to greek:

1) it is great reading for the beginner since its pretty much pure attic and, since the meaning is easy to understand, it allows you to focus on learning greek. No "the word was with God"-sentences here. It is for the same reasons also great for anyone looking to prevent or cure the terrible rustygreek-syndrom.

2) It is also a good example of greek historical-writing and the travel descriptions in Anabasis of the "bible lands", Anatolia and Mesopotamia, could work well with the Atlas module and the descriptions of the persian culture (i.e. very much the context of scripture) are just very interesting.

3) And, last but not least, its "attic" character made it popular with later literary critics and writers when atticism became dominant and that not just in "pagan" literature. I believe that it should therefore prepare its reader for post-koine christian literature.

[Michael T]

It looks like logos users will be able to import and use *ALL* Greek and Latin texts from Perseus. Including the Duke Data Bank of Papyri, and grammatical tools. I have the import feature for Accordance but found it tedious to import each of the 2000+ texts on the TLG-E CD. Any change Accordance will offer this? I for one would be very grateful for an integrated platform to search. I have been using Diogenes in conjunction with TLG. See here for logos announcement. http://blog.logos.co...ks-for-logos-4/

[Helen Brown]

We are looking into the possibilities.

[R. Mansfield]

Here's a legal question I've always had. I know that someone legally has to have access to one of the older TLG CDROMS to convert the files for use in Accordance. But since that actual content is technically public domain, once the file is converted into an Accordance format, is it legal to share the Accordance file? I ask this because I have converted a lot of those files, and would be happy to share them if it wasn't breaking copyright.

[Helen Brown]

As I understand it, these etexts are copyright to TLG and cannot be distributed to anyone else. In fact, strictly speaking, only people with a current license for the TLG CD-ROM, are entitled to export the texts, but as the CD-ROM is no longer licensed, probably no-one should be exporting the text.

[Katzenjammer]

I did some work in the classics while in college, and definitely see the value in NT studies both for greek as well as historical background. Soooo much of western culture and even current (incorrect IMHO) christian belief is based on Plato's views of spirit, "heaven" and right living. The use of what we translate as righteousness in the church is also an important topic to Plato as well.

If you want to understand the early church, understanding Artistotle's politics, rhetoric and ethics are really required reading. Not really my opinion, you'll hear this from others much better educated.

Putting all these greek texts in a cross searchable form in accordance (think the linking commands from that last podcast) would provide a richer understanding of how Paul spoke on many different levels to the hellenic culture of his day, and a view into how syncretism crept in(from both perspectives).


I would very much like to see the ability to import Perseus project texts into Accordance. I'd be willing to do work on my own if I could just import the text and search it with other greek texts in accordance!

This is very well said!