Ancient Greek Literary Style: Bicolon, Tricolon, Isocolon
Posted: March 23rd, 2018, 6:08 pm
Read the following on Exegetical Tools regarding a New Commentary on Ephesians by S. M. Baugh,
Baugh
This started with Eph 1:3-14. Most commentators notice this is one "sentence" in Greek and some treat it as if Paul is being undisciplined and too wordy here. My notion was to ask how the original audience would have heard the text.
It turns out that ancient Greeks do not think in terms of sentences but in terms of three divisions of their compositions: the comma (=phrase); the colon (=clause); the period (= a grouping of two to four or sometimes more cola). A "period" may or may not complete the "sense" or "idea" which is how Greeks describe what we call a "sentence" (there is no Greek word corresponding exactly to our "sentence"). So, I tried to present the text as an ancient Greek would.
In my more recent work on Hebrews I've refined and expanded on this approach. Hebrews is more "literary" than Ephesians, so I think it is the one work in the New Testament to read for this ways of reading the text. One central issue here, which I have not elaborated (yet), is that the composition of a work into various types of cola and periods (e.g., bicolon, tricolon, isocolon, "falling" or "rising" groupings of cola and especially use of occasional rounded periods) is a main feature of an author's style.
When scholars evaluate the style of Ephesians as not Pauline, they miss these vital, ancient Greek characteristics of style. I have noticed, for example, many stylistic similarities between Ephesians and Romans, which substantiates Pauline authorship of Ephesians further. To read ancient Greek as sentences and paragraphs is to re-shape the text into a modern form and miss its original compositional characteristics.
Now, is what Baugh saying above correct? or ?
En Xristw,
Rev. Bryant J. Williams III
Baugh
This started with Eph 1:3-14. Most commentators notice this is one "sentence" in Greek and some treat it as if Paul is being undisciplined and too wordy here. My notion was to ask how the original audience would have heard the text.
It turns out that ancient Greeks do not think in terms of sentences but in terms of three divisions of their compositions: the comma (=phrase); the colon (=clause); the period (= a grouping of two to four or sometimes more cola). A "period" may or may not complete the "sense" or "idea" which is how Greeks describe what we call a "sentence" (there is no Greek word corresponding exactly to our "sentence"). So, I tried to present the text as an ancient Greek would.
In my more recent work on Hebrews I've refined and expanded on this approach. Hebrews is more "literary" than Ephesians, so I think it is the one work in the New Testament to read for this ways of reading the text. One central issue here, which I have not elaborated (yet), is that the composition of a work into various types of cola and periods (e.g., bicolon, tricolon, isocolon, "falling" or "rising" groupings of cola and especially use of occasional rounded periods) is a main feature of an author's style.
When scholars evaluate the style of Ephesians as not Pauline, they miss these vital, ancient Greek characteristics of style. I have noticed, for example, many stylistic similarities between Ephesians and Romans, which substantiates Pauline authorship of Ephesians further. To read ancient Greek as sentences and paragraphs is to re-shape the text into a modern form and miss its original compositional characteristics.
Now, is what Baugh saying above correct? or ?
En Xristw,
Rev. Bryant J. Williams III