Saturday, May 10, 2014

Looke Home

Retirèd thoughts enjoy their own delights,
As beauty doth, in self-beholding eye;
Man's mind a mirror is, of heavenly sights,
A brief, wherein all marvels summèd lie;
Of fairest forms and sweetest shapes the store,
Most graceful all, yet thought may grace them more.

The mind a creature is, yet can create,
To nature's patterns adding higher skill;
Of finest works, wit better could the state
If force of wit had equal power of will;
Devise of man in working hath no end;
What thought can think, another thought can mend.

Man's soul, of endless beauties image is,
Drawn by the work of endless skill and might;
This skilful might gave many sparks of bliss,
And to discern this bliss a native light.
To frame God's image as his worths required,
His might, his skill, his word, and will conspired.

All that he had, his image should present;
All that it should present, he could afford;
To that he could afford, his will was bent,
His will was followed with performing word.
Let this suffice, by this conceive the rest:
He should, he could, he would, he did the rest.


--Robert Southwell, 1561-1595













Stanza 1:
  • "mirror", "brief", and "store":  three different images of "Man's mind".
  • "Most graceful all":  the "forms" and "shapes".

Stanza 2:
  • "better could":  could better (in the sense of improve).

Stanza 3:
  • "endless skill and might", "This skillful  might":  God.
  • "worths":  OED, sv worth 3b:  "The character or standing of a person in respect of moral and intellectual qualities; esp. high personal merit or attainments", but used in the plural sometimes for the worth of a single human individual (here God).  The examples cited at worth 3b are from Southwell's period precisely, ranging as they do from 1586-1631.
Stanza 4:
  • "To that":  To what.

     It isn't the modern critical edition ed. by McDonald & Brown (1967), but for a sense of Southwell's own orthography, see pp. 65-66 of the Grossart edition of 1872.

Wednesday, May 7, 2014

Luke 5:10

"A fisherman you are, [and] a fisherman you will remain, but henceforth you
  • will capture [men alive]
  • restore life to men [(rendras la vie à des hommes)]."
     François Deltombe's rendition of the supposedly double sense of Lk 5:10 (ἀπὸ τοῦ νῦν ἀνθρώπους ἔσῃ ζωγρῶν), in François Deltombe, O.P., "Désormais tu rendras la vie à des homes:  Luc, V, 10," Revue biblique 89, no. 4 (1982):  497 (492-497).
     Undoubtedly the commentaries (among the other tools I haven't bothered to check) cover and perhaps dispute this in detail, but BDAG (published in 2000) suggests not Deltombe's "third sense", but only "capture alive".  What is more, the Greek word index to Louw-Nida, the lexicon "based on semantic domains", covers only the occurrence in 2 Tim 2:26, and under the heading "Control, Restrain" ("'having been controlled by him to do his will'").  Unlike Kittel (TDNT) and Brown (NIDNTT), Spicq, in vol. 2 of his TLNT, includes an entry on ζωγρέω that gives for Lk 5:10 "keep a captive alive, be gracious and merciful to him, even restore him to life" (163), but of course antedates (or, rather, is roughly contemporary with) Deltombe.
     Deltombe is, for his part, quick to acknowledge that a few others before him had noted this potential "third sense", too, just e.g. Loisy, Hilgert, Wuellner, and Derett (497).
     Lk 5:10 as interpreted here in the light of the potential semantic range of ζωγρέω is meant to highlight a supposedly distinctively Lukan response to the concern raised by L. Grollenberg, who had observed that "A fisherman necessarily kills the fishes he catches.  Therefore, Jesus' symbolic description of the apostolic activities ('I will make you fishers of men' Mt., iv, 19 - Mc, I, 17), addressed to Simon and Andrew, could raise difficulties in a more logically thinking mind" (Tijd. Theol., V, 1965, pp. 330 s., as quoted on p. 493).