During the evening service on Easter (the so-called Agape Vespers), the Orthodox Church has a tradition of reading the gospel passage for that day (John 20:19–25) in many different languages. In Greece, one of the versions sung is a rendering by St Nicodemus the Hagiorite (1749–1809) which casts the passage in the Homeric Greek and dactylic hexameter of the Iliad and Odyssey.

Ὄφρακε νωιτέροισιν ἐν οὔασι πάγχυ βάλωμεν
θέσφατον, ἱμερόεσσαν, ἁγνὴν Εὐάγγελον ὄππα
μειλίξωμεν Ἄνακτα Θεὸν μέγαν, οὐρανίωνα.
Ἰθυγενεῖς. Σοφίη. Εὐαγγελίοιο κλύωμεν.

Εἰρήνη χαρίεσσ’ ἐπ’ ἀπείρονα δῆμον ἐσεῖται.

Ἐκ δ’ ἄρ’ Ἰωάννοιο τόδ’ ἔστι βροντογόνοιο.

Ἄλλ’ ἄγετ’ ἀτρεμέσι χρησμοὺς λεύσωμεν ὀπωπαῖς.

Εὖτε δὴ ἠέλιος φαέθων ἐπὶ ἕσπερον ἦλθε
καὶ σκιόωντο ἀγυιαὶ ἐπὶ χθονὶ πουλυβοτείρῃ,
ἥματι ἐν πρώτῳ, ὅτε τύμβου ἆλτο Σαωτήρ,
κλῃισταὶ δὲ ἔσαν θυρίδες πυκινῶς ἀραρεῖαι,
βλῆντο δὲ πάντες ὀχῆες ἐυσταθέος μεγάροιο,
ἔνθα Μαθηταὶ ὁμοῦ τε ἀολλέες ἠγερέθοντο
μυρόμενοι θανάτῳ ἐπ’ ἀεικέι Χριστοῦ Ἄνακτος
καὶ χόλον ἀφραίνοντα Ἰουδαίων τρομέοντες,
ἤλυθε δὴ τότε Χριστὸς Ἄναξ θεοειδέι μορφῇ,
ἔστη δ’ ἐν μεσάτῳ ἀναφανδὸν καὶ φάτο μῦθον·
Εἰρήνη ὑμῖν φίλη, ἡσυχίη τ’ ἐρατεινή.
Ὡς εἰπὼν ἐπέδειξεν ἑὴν πλευρὴν ἠδὲ χεῖρας.
Γήθησαν δὲ Μαθηταὶ ἐπεὶ ἴδον Εὐρυμέδοντα.

Τοὺς δ’ αὖτις προσέειπεν Ἰησοῦς οὐρανοφοίτης·
Εἰρήνη ὑμῖν φίλη, ἡσυχίη τ’ ἐρατεινή.
Ὡς ἐμὲ πέμψε Πατὴρ ὅς ὑπέρτατα δώματα ναίει,
ῳδ’ ἐγὼ ὑμέας ἐς χθόνα πέμπω εὐρυόδειαν.
Ὡς ἄρα φωνήσας Μύσταις ἔμπνευσ’ ἀγορεύων·
Πνεῦμα δέχνυσθ’ Ἅγιον, φαεσίμβροτον, ὑψιθόωκον·
Ὧν μὲν ἀτασθαλίας θνητῶν ἀφέητ’ ἐπὶ γαῖαν,
τοῖσι νύπου ἀφίενται ἐς οὐρανὸν ἀστερόεντα·
ὧν δ’ ἄρ’ ἐπεσβολίας ὑππερφιάλων κρατέητε,
τοῖσιν ἁλυκτοπέδῃς κεῖναι σθεναρῇς κρατέονται.

Θωμᾶς δ’ ῳ ἐπίκλησις ἅπασι Δίδυμος ἀκούειν
οὐχ ἅμα τοῖς ἄλλοις Μύσταις πρὶν ὁμώροφος ἔσκε
Ἰησοῦς ὅτ’ ἔβη εἴσω μελάθροιο ἑταίρων.
Ἴαχον οὖν ἄλλοι τούτῳ ἐρίηρες ἑταῖροι·
Εἴδομεν ὀφθαλμοῖσιν Ἰησοῦν παγκρατέοντα.
Τοὺς δ’ ἀπαμειβόμενος Θωμᾶς προσέφησεν ἀτειρής·
Ἴχνια ἤν μὴ ἴδω μετὰ χείρεσιν ἡλατορήτῃς,
δάκτυλον ἐμβάλλω τε ἐκείνου ἔνδοθι χειρός,
χεῖρα τ’ ἐμὴν εἴσω πλευρῆς οἷ ρεῖα βαλοίμην,
οὔποτε ὑμετέροισι λόγοις κεφαλῇ κατανεύσω.

Like the Latin translation of the Kalevala by Tuomo Pekkanen, this could only have been made by someone with a great love of epic and a lot of time on their hands.

In the course of updating the installation of the LaTeX typesetting system on my computer, I was randomly reading the supplied documentation and discovered a remarkable Greek typeface that I had never come across before. This typeface is most notable for its use in printed editions of the Philokalia, the great compendium of Orthodox teaching compiled between the 4th and 15th centuries. Here’s a sample of a passage from Aristotle’s Poetics from the documentation:

This typeface places accents after capital letters. Furthermore, it contains over 40 ligatures, many of which you wouldn’t be able to guess.

To those familiar with Greek manuscript writing and the introduction of printing to the Greek-speaking world, this is probably old-hat. But because my own studies of Greek have been limited to the classical canon typeset using standard typefaces like Porson and Lasergreek, I’ve never encounted this exotic writing system before, and a Greek original inspiration certainly helps explain the unnecessary flourishes of some printed Church Slavonic texts.

(For TeXnicians, the relevant package is Apostolos Syropoulos’ philokalia, supplied with XeTeX.)

Two Classical Greek matters have drawn my attention recently.

The first is Brooks Haxton’s dreadful translation of Heraclitus (Fragments, Penguin Books, 2003), where he follows “translators” like Stephen Mitchell (who butchered the Tao Te Ching, Gilgamesh, and many other world classics) in rendering ancient wise men into hip beatnik English without wasting time on actual training in the original language first. He frequently turns Heraclitus’ declarations into questions, and even worse, adds content that was never in the original.

A tame example is that he renders fragment 60, Δίκης οὔνομα οὐκ ἂν ᾔδεσαν, εἰ ταῦτα μὴ ἦν (literally ‘They would not know the name of justice were it not for these things”) as ‘Without injustices, the name of justice would mean what?’ A more obnoxious example is his translation of fragment 80, Ἐδιζησάμην ἐμεωυτόν (lit. ‘I have inquired of myself’) as ‘Applicants for wisdom do what I have done: inquire within’. But what really takes the cake is fragment 89, the simple Latin phrase Ex homine in tricennio potest avus haberi. Meaning simply ‘A man could be a grandfather in thirty years,’ the phrase is twisted by Haxton until it reaches ‘Look: the baby born under the new moon under the old moon holds her grandchild in her arms’. Surely it is can be generally regarded that putting things in the translation never in the original makes for a dishonest translator, and that ‘translating’ without knowing the original essentially makes one a charlatan, or am I the last sane man in a world gone mad? For more on Heraclitus, see my own translation, to which I add fragments from time to time.

Coming soon is Stephen C. Carlson’s Gospel Hoax: Morton Smith’s Invention of Secret Mark (Baylor University Press, 2005), the latest work to show that Secret Mark is a deliberate forgery. Much work has already been done tying Smith’s discovery to a similar event in a World War II-era work of fiction, and I know that Carlson has used handwriting analysis to show that Smith is the author, but I’m tantalized by news that his work will also use linguistic analysis. I have always been impressed by Lorenzo Valla’s Renaissance unmasking of the Donation of Constantine as a forgery on similar philological grounds.