In the beginning was the…conversation? In this episode Jeff and Dave tackle a fascinating 1977 article by Marjorie O’Rourke Boyle in which she reviews the history of the translation of John 1:1, particularly the Latin words used to express the Greek ὁ λόγος (logos), usually taken in English as “Word”. We learn that the earliest Latin translations used the word sermo (“conversation”), which seems to have a broader range of meanings and referents (connotation vs. denotation) than the verbum Jerome selected, and which then dominated translations for a millennium. And just when you thought it was safe to crack open the Vulgate, along comes Erasmus in 1516, who rocks the theological and philological worlds by suggesting a return to sermo. Which word better expresses the range of the Greek logos? How might our choice change the way we read John 1:1?
To Live and Let Dido: Aeneid Book IV, Part 1 (Ad Navseam, Episode 90)
Dirges for Dead Dido: St. Augustine and Vergil (Ad Navseam, Episode 89)
Memorizing Latin: The Why and Some What, Part 1 (Gvrgle 3)
If at First You Don’t Succeed, Troy, Troy, Again: Aeneid Book III, Part 2 (Ad Navseam, Episode 88)
Crouching Helen, Hidden Destiny: Vergil’s Aeneid Books II and III (Ad Navseam, Episode 87)
Oh for Goodness Snakes! Vergil’s Aeneid Book 2, Part 2 (Ad Navseam, Episode 86)
Never Look a Grift Horse in the Mouth: Vergil’s Aeneid Book II, Part I (Ad Navseam, Episode 85)
Mist Opportunities: Aeneid Book I, Part 2 (Ad Navseam, Episode 84)
Girl Juno it’s True: Aeneid I and the Causes of Juno’s Wrath (Ad Navseam, Episode 83)
The Alexamenos Graffito and Roman Persecution of Christians (Gvrgle 2)
A Refugee from Fate: Vergil’s Aeneid 1.1-7 (Gvrgle 1)
Whaddya Noah?: Deucalion, Pyrrha, and the Flood in Ovid’s Metamorphoses (Ad Navseam, Episode 82)
No Meat, Please, We’re Pythagoreans!: Pythagoras in Book 15 of Ovid’s Metamorphoses (Ad Navseam, Episode 81)
What’s a Motto You, Two? University and College Mottoes (Ad Navseam, Episode 80)
Ides, Ides, Baby!: Caesar’s Assassination in the Roman Historians (Ad Navseam, Episode 79)
Clever Jokes for Clever Folks: Robert Mac and Aristotle’s Lost Treatise on Comedy (Ad Navseam, Episode 78)
Dr. Amphibolus, I Presume?: Erasmus as Translator of the Classics (Ad Navseam, Episode 77)
A Visit to the Roman Catacombs (Ad Navseam, Episode 76)
’Beware of Falling Turtles!’ and other Strange Tales: Death Stories of famous Greeks and Romans” (Ad Navseam, Episode 75)
Cad to the Bone: Alcibiades and Asebeia in 415 BC (Ad Navseam, Episode 74)
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