Re: I Timothy 3:2, DIDAKTIKON

From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Mon Apr 03 2000 - 20:53:25 EDT


At 6:49 PM -0400 4/3/00, Polycarp66@aol.com wrote:
>In a message dated 4/3/2000 12:54:28 PM Central Standard Time,
>p_harrison@bigfoot.com writes:
>
><< DEI OUN TON EPISKOPON ANEPILHMPTON EINAI MIAV GUNAIKOV ANDRA NHFALION
> SWFRONA KOSMION FILOXENON DIDAKTIKON
>
> What are the shades of meaning of DIDAKTIKON here? "Teachable", or "able to
> teach"?
> >>
>It would seem that this term appears only twice in the NT. It doesn't appear
>in the classical literature according to Perseus. The meaning generally given
>is "apt to teach." It would appear that we are almost stuck with that
>meaning. It would be interesting to find other roots ending in -IKOS to see
>how the suffix affects the meaning of the root.

Adjectives in -IKOS in Greek have the regular sense of "concerned with" or
"having to do with"--it is the source of the derivative English adjectival
suffix "-ic".

As for DIDAKTIKOS, every NT lexicon I've looked at says it must mean "able
to teach"--which is appropriate for this adjectival ending, "of such a type
as to teach" or "concerned with/involved in teaching." It's hard to imagine
how it really could mean anything else: it's natural as a qualification for
leadership. Moreover, if one really want to say teachable, it seems to me
one would more likely go to the verb MANQANW and have an adjective MAQIKOS.

"Didactic" is a term used for a category of Greek and Latin poetry that is
akin to Wisdom Literature--instructive poems, in which category one would
find Hesiod's Works and Days (farming), Aratus' Phainomena (astronomy),
Lucretius' De Rerum Natura (Epicurean philosophy), Vergil's Georgics
(farming), and Ovid's Ars Amatoria (love, of course), to name the
better-known of the genre. Obviously this comes from the Greek DIDAKTIKOS,
but the English word apparently not used before the 17th century.

-- 

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 WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/

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