Sunday, November 1, 2009

Nietzsche on New Testament Greek

"It was a piece of subtle refinement that God learned Greek when he wanted to become a writer—and that he did not learn it better."

"Es ist eine Feinheit, dass Gott griechisch lernte, als er Schriftsteller werden wollte — und dass er es nicht besser lernte."

     Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond good and evil: prelude to a philosophy of the future IV.121 (trans. R. J. Hollingdale (London: Penguin Books, 1990), 98).  Much of Beyond good and evil will require second (or third) reading of me, but I liked this.

The Tome of Damasus on the Extra patristicum

"If someone has said that, established in the flesh when he was on earth, he [(the Son)] was not in heaven with the Father, he is a heretic [(Si quis dixerit, quod in carne constitutus cum esset in terra, in caelis cum Patre non erat: haereticus est)]."

Canon 13 of the Tome of Damasus (382), as reproduced at DS 165. Cf. The Christian faith in the doctrinal documents of the Catholic Church, 7th rev. & enlarged, ed. Jacques Dupuis (New York, NY: Alba House, 2001), 306/13, p. 145, where this runs, "Anyone who says that the Son, while incarnate on earth, was not in heaven with the Father, is a heretic." Cf. the fifth-century "Faith of Damasus" (DS 72, qui nunquam desiit esse cum Patre =Dupuis 15, p. 11, "who never ceased to be with the Father").