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Mt 13: more Socrates


jkgayle

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If we read Mt side by side with Plato we hear and watch Jesus talking and acting like Socrates (with some of the same lessons to the audience and spectators of the different scenes). Here's a snippet fr our reading of Mt for today and snippets from the Gorgias and the Cratylus. We can see the Greek effect and the Greek phrasing and the Greek phrases and the Greek method in common:

 

51 “Have you understood all these things? ”They answered him, “Yes.” 52 “Therefore,” he said to them, “every teacher of the law who has become a disciple in the kingdom of heaven is like the owner of a house who brings out of his storeroom treasures new and old.” Rejection at Nazareth 53 When Jesus had finished these parables, he left there. 54 He went to his hometown and began to teach them in their synagogue, so that they were astonished and said, “Where did this man get this wisdom and these miraculous powers?  55 Isn’t this the carpenter’s son?  Isn’t his mother called Mary, and his brothers James, Joseph, Simon, and Judas?  56 And his sisters, aren’t they all with us? So where does he get all these things? ” 57 And they were offended by him. Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honor except in his hometown and in his household.”  58 And he did not do many miracles there because of their unbelief.

 

δυνάμεις πολλὰς διὰ τὴν ἀπιστίαν αὐτῶν.

 

And then by the sieve, as my story-teller said, he means the soul: and the soul of the thoughtless he likened to a sieve, as being perforated, since it is unable to hold anything by reason of its unbelief and forgetfulness. All this, indeed, is bordering pretty well on the absurd; but still it sets forth what I wish to impress upon you, if I somehow can, in order to induce you to make a change, and instead of a life of insatiate licentiousness to choose an orderly one that is set up and contented with what it happens to have got. Now, am I at all prevailing upon you to change over to the view that the orderly people are happier than the licentious; or will no amount of similar fables that I might tell you have any effect in changing your mind?

 

ἅτε οὐ δυναμένην στέγειν δι᾿ ἀπιστίαν

 

51 “Have you understood all these things? ”They answered him, “Yes.” 52 “Therefore,” he said to them, “every teacher of the law who has become a disciple in the kingdom of heaven is like the owner of a house who brings out of his storeroom treasures new and old.” Rejection at Nazareth 53 When Jesus had finished these parables, he left there. 54 He went to his hometown and began to teach them in their synagogue, so that they were astonished and said, “Where did this man get this wisdom and these miraculous powers?  55 Isn’t this the carpenter’s son?  Isn’t his mother called Mary, and his brothers James, Joseph, Simon, and Judas?  56 And his sisters, aren’t they all with us? So where does he get all these things? ” 57 And they were offended by him. Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honor except in his hometown and in his household.”  58 And he did not do many miracles there because of their unbelief.

 

Ναί

 

οὐχ οὗτός ἐστιν ὁ τοῦ τέκτονος υἱός;

 

Socrates: The weaver, then, will use the shuttle well, and well means like a weaver; and a teacher will use a name well, and well means like a teacher. Hermogenes: Yes. Socrates: Whose work will the weaver use well when he uses the shuttle? Hermogenes: The carpenter’s. Socrates: Is everyone a carpenter, or he who has the skill? Hermogenes: He who has the skill.... Socrates: And is not this he who knows how to ask questions? Hermogenes: Certainly. Socrates: And the same one knows also how to make replies? Hermogenes: Yes. Socrates: And the man who knows how to ask and answer questions you call a dialectician? Hermogenes: Yes, that is what I call him. Socrates: The work of the carpenter, then, is to make a rudder under the supervision of the steersman, if the rudder is to be a good one. Hermogenes: Evidently. Socrates: And the work of the lawgiver, as it seems, is to make a name, with the dialectician as his supervisor, if names are to be well given. Hermogenes: True. Socrates: Then, Hermogenes, the giving of names can hardly be, as you imagine, a trifling matter, or a task for trifling or casual persons: and Cratylus is right in saying that names belong to things by nature and that not everyone is an artisan of names, but only he who keeps in view the name which belongs by nature to each particular thing and is able to embody its form in the letters and syllables.

 

Ναί

 

Τῷ τοῦ τέκτονος.

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