There are things I want to bring to your attention, but I have little time to entertain you lot this week because one of Arkansas’s native sons is visiting, and he must be entertained. In the interim, read this essay by Michael Bérubé, which illustrates and discusses the significant ethical problems surrounding the testing of fœtuses for genetic diseases. More to come about it, but in short, Bérubé hits the point where I find last week’s humanificating both useful and difficult.
Not unrelated, purity in sexuality is also passé:
P.S. What Greek word is equivalent to the Latin familia (which is of course the English family)? What about Greek for contemplation or meditation?
Laura is going to have to come through on the P.S., I’ve forgotten everything.
by JH—Mar 13, 04:23 PM
Come to think of it, I do have a giant Bible concordance with Greek equivalents—I could open that. So I suppose I’m not helpless. (And last night I did try on the online etymology dictionary, but of course the words I think of all have latin roots, and there’s no linkages…) I’ll look that stuff up and see what I see; you can tell me if it rings a bell.
by greg—Mar 13, 05:25 PM
That might yield fruit, but be warned, NT Greek is but a pale, impoverished shadow of classical Greek, which I’m guessing is what you’re interested in (has this to do with Arendt)?
by JH—Mar 13, 05:54 PM
Not Arendt, though she also might bear fruit, but another project I’m thinking on.
by greg—Mar 13, 05:56 PM
That might be your best bet, though I’ll try to work on it later tonight or tomorrow. A good deal of my Greek stuff is still packed or in Iowa, or both.
by Laura—Mar 13, 05:59 PM
First shot: so the concordance gives for “family” what’s to be expected, patria, but goes oikia for “household.”
by greg—Mar 13, 07:41 PM
JH is on the money about NT Greek, which is what my mother’s professor liked to call “a late, demotic form.” (Unless of course he was talking about Medieval Latin, which, while not precisely parallel to NT Greek is similarly not the Real Thing.)
Anyway, the Big Liddell (to distinguish it from the Middle Liddell and the Little Liddell, and which is to Attic Greek what the OED is to English) gives you quite a few references for oikia. Of course, they’re all in Greek, but if you keep clicking through you can get some English translations to give you a bit better of an idea. I don’t know that any of them are quite what you’re looking for, though.
Doing English-to-Greek translation is difficult, because there aren’t really English-to-Greek lexicons, because almost no one is crazy enough to try to write in Greek.
Genos might be another option.
Anyway, Perseus is worth poking around in (and it’s way, way, way more complete than when I was in college, when it was mostly just a pipe dream).
by Laura—Mar 13, 09:53 PM
Incidentally, if anyone’s wanting to read the Berube (sorry, can’t get the accents to work!) article mentioned above and getting a “you must pay for this” screen, it’s available through various databases (ProQuest, LexisNexis, and Opposing Viewpoints Resource Center, and possibly others, although I’ll note that I wasn’t able to dig it up in ProQuest, though I didn’t try very hard) that you may have access to if you’re connected to an academic institution or large public library system. If you’re unable to get it that way, let me know [newrambler at gmail dot com] and I’ll hook you up.
by Laura—Mar 15, 09:31 PM
Paywall, I denounce you!
(On your Mac it’s easy: Command + E, then hit e again. The other easy way to get Bérubé‘s accents at this point, especially on a PC, is to cut & paste from the Bérubé above. Otherwise it’s a bunch of nonsense keystrokes…)
by greg—Mar 16, 10:49 AM