21st Century Classical Greek -- authenticity and a head's up

This is a head’s up about more changes in accessing my blog. After April 15 the rules on Twitter change so here’s how you can keep reading my posts or read posts you didn’t know about. Generally:

1.         Twitter: You will have to Follow me to see future notices about posts. I am not now and never have been “verified” (had a blue check) and after the 15^th my tweets will no longer show up on the “For You” tab, only on the “Following” tab.

2.         Web. In a browser you can bookmark the blog. On a smart phone, use your search engine. Find pajheil blogspot and click on the link. Then go to the bottom and look for the “website version” link. Click on that and put it on your home screen.

3.         You can subscribe to the blog from the blog site.

4.         My Friends on Facebook will see the links to the post come up.

There’s one more scheduled post on Greek after this one and then, as with other subjects, I’ll post when I think I’ve found something new.

In Book II 101.5 I get to point out a way to tell if part of a writer’s work has been forged.

ὁ δὲ τήν τε Χαλκιδικὴν καὶ Βοττικὴν καὶ Μακεδονίαν ἅμα ἐπέχων ἔφθειρε, καὶ ἐπειδὴ αὐτῷ οὐδὲν ἐπράσσετο ὧν ἕνεκα ἐσέβαλε …

Thucydides has a habit of using this double sigma. We also find it in Josephus’ Antiquities of the Jews, 18.82:

προσποιησάμενος δὲ τρεῖς ἄνδρας εἰς τὰ πάντα ὁμοιοτρόπους τούτοις ἐπιφοιτήσασαν Φουλβίαν τῶν ἐν ἀξιώματι γυναικῶν καὶ νομίμοις προσεληλυθυῖαν τοῖς Ἰουδαϊκοῖς πείθουσι πορφύραν καὶ χρυσὸν εἰς τὸ ἐν Ἱεροσολύμοις ἱερὸν διαπέμψασθαι, καὶ λαβόντες ἐπὶ χρείας τοῖς ἰδίοις ἀναλώμασιν αὐτὰ ποιοῦνται, ἐφ᾽ ὅπερ καὶ τὸ πρῶτον ἡ αἴτησις ἐπράσσετο.

This form of the verb shows up in books 17 and 18 of Antiquities – but in section 8.94 it is ἐπράττετο and in book 16 we have διεπράττετο. Writers don’t normally change their spelling in the middle of a book, unless they are representing dialect. Normally I would have a character in a book say “can’t”, but if I was representing southeastern US dialect I might put “cain’t”.

Book 18 65-84 are the stories of Paulina and Fulvia. The change in grammar identifies them as insertions. This happens all the time. It’s one of the reasons that you can’t take the text of classical writings for granted. Another is the fact that whole works have been composed and then foisted onto the public with a famous writer’s name. The Embassy to Gaius of Philo is probably authentic; the twelve volumes about Judaism aren’t, and the gross errors in them show that they are not. Anecdota probably was not written by Procopius as claimed.

Now look at 63 and 64.  There is an identical section in Wars of the Jews, in only one copy, where it is known to be a forgery. Let’s look at the context. Josephus died in 100 CE. The doctrine of the “christ” was strictly a Christian issue. The phrase o khristos in would be meaningless to both Josephus and his audience, who were upper class Romans. There’s no sense putting the phrase there without an explanation of what it means. The same issue applies to references to Shabbat and New Moon in Amos and Hoshea; they don’t explain what it means because their audience are practicing Jews. Josephus’ audience are not practicing Christians. It takes a practicing Christian to make this insertion.

In addition, the insertion has pollous, “many”, the classic weasel wording that people mark with {{citation needed}} on Wikipedia. How many is many? Fifty? In an empire of maybe 8 million?

Furthermore, Origen had a copy of Antiquities, being a Greek geek, and his copy did not have this material. You’d think it would, but you’d be wrong.

Finally, pollous is grammatically incorrect. I exchanged emails in 2009 with a gentleman at Cambridge University, where they certainly ought to know their Greek, and he said it’s wrong. Somebody who didn’t know Greek put these two sections in simply because this part of Antiquities is set in the time of Pontius Pilate.

Josephus isn’t the only victim. So is Thucydides. Notes on III 84 say it is an interpolation. Charles Smith points out the moralizing tone. Thucydides is not a crusading reporter, he’s Sergeant Friday: “Just the facts, ma’am.”.

This comment, unknown to Smith, reinforces that Thucydides was working like the recorder of an oral tradition. Olrik’s mentor Grundtvig specifically worked with ballads that originated in the oral environment, made their way into literate culture, and then back. The literate redevelopers inserted moralistic material, typically the refrains, and these were stripped out when their work got back into the oral environment.

And remember the other week when I showed that in medieval times, people were still meddling with written material.

So that’s another reason we’re learning Greek and starting with Thucydides – or Herodotus or Xenophon. Until you know how Greek reads in Classical prose, you are at the mercy of writers whose work has been doctored to say what somebody wanted it to mean.