Glen Thompson

in

Association of Biblical Language Educators (ABLE)

6 years ago

I have posted a PDF of the Apostles' Creed as we use it in our beginning biblical Greek intensive class. https://amber.faithlife.com/shares/ie1vLXxtZPrl2o4i. Beginning in week 2 we work through the text. Since some of our students, especially those with little experience with alphabetic written languages, have trouble learning to read, we added the second line to help them learn to pronounce as they read. We post an MP3 file so they can practice on their own. By week 3 we incorporate this into our morning devotion. (A great text for aorist passive participles by the way.) We (thanks to my colleague Michael Smith for this) recently noted an interesting issue in the Greek version. The version I originally picked up from somewhere, is similar to that of Rod Decker in his "Koine Greek Reader." The "Third Article" begins with Πιστεύω εἰς τὸ ἅγιον τὸ πνεῦμα. This would be odd Greek. As we would expect εἰς τὸ ἅγιον πνεῦμα or the more common εἰς τὸ πνεῦμα τὸ ἅιαν. The latter is what is found in the Greek version of the "Book of Common Prayer" (London, 1923). The earliest version of the creed known is in a Greek letter of Marcellus of Ancyra to Julius I of Rome (AD 341), and that letter uses τὸ ἅγιον πνεῦμα (cf. my edition in "The Correspondence of Pope Julius I," Cath. Univ. of Amer. Press, 2015). So you can take your pick, but I have abandoned what I (and Decker) originally had in favor of τὸ ἅγιον τὸ πνεῦμα.