Re: LXX and MT, relevancey

From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Thu Feb 03 2000 - 11:24:46 EST


At 2:41 PM +0000 2/3/00, J.K. Aitken wrote:
> Even as an academic myself I would like to know what 'ornery'
>means in Carl's message!

Fair enough question, to which I shall respond on-list, since I usead the
term on-list: "ornery" is the term I have found, partly because it is
old-fashioned American backwoods slang, most useful to refer to the flawed,
inconsistent, obstinate, rebellious, sometimes self-defeating, sometimes
downright nasty and obstructive, often lazy, often reckless or thoughtless
(to which you are welcome to add some adjectives of your own that belong in
the 'definition') way in which all human beings I have ever known behave at
one time or another, some more frequently than others. In theological terms
(and speaking ONLY for myself as a backsliding Calvinist whose youthful
sins catch up with me in my latter years) I would be willing and ready to
equate "orneriness" with "original sin" (a doctrine that I once claimed not
to believe in, in the days before I had my own children, after which I knew
I believed in it), but even if I didn't believe in "original sin," I would
nevertheless insist, on the basis of what I have observed in life, the
proposition that PANTES hOI ANQRWPOI are "ornery." And to make one further
theological affirmation (ONLY for myself--I speak for nobody else in this),
I do believe that, by the grace of God, some of us, or most of us, perhaps
all of us, to some extent, do manage, more often than we deserve, to
overcome the orneriness within us.

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics/Washington University
One Brookings Drive/St. Louis, MO, USA 63130/(314) 935-4018
Home: 7222 Colgate Ave./St. Louis, MO 63130/(314) 726-5649
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu

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