So, my seminary lounge - named "Junkin Common" after its donors, decades ago - is a rather dodgy sort of place, for a seminary anyway. It's quite curious. First of all, there are stained glass windows with little goblins on them. Someone paid for stained glass windows that are meant to be JOKES! Now we can barely get people to donate money for student scholarships, and someone back in the 1920s wanted to commission stained glass windows with goblins... the mind reels. But humor is probably good for theology. Maybe the Junkins wanted to affirm the mischeviousness in people who have the pomposity to decide they want to be ordained. The goblins are studying, writing, laughing, and trying to "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil." They seem very earthy and coarse. It does sound familiar. And very English, somehow, too - fairy tales and things.
And then there's the fireplace. I've been trying to dissect the Greek all year, and I can't quite get it - my grammar's so bad. Transcribed into English letters, it's ethos anthropo daimon - which is confusing to me because those are two nominative nouns and a dative noun. Literally, I think it's "an ethos to man demon/spirit." Which doesn't make any sense. Any more literate Greek readers out there? Of course, since this is an Episcopal seminary, someone may have just gotten their grammar wrong. (We perhaps more devoted to the prayer book and the Queen's English than the Bible and its languages, but that's a whole other post.)So, it's nice that the Junkins wanted us to have a lounge where students felt like it was alright to be sort of bad. And this is indeed the room where we have drinking parties, although they are admittedly rather tame. Still, Episcopalians like to say, "wherever two or three are gathered, there's a fifth!" Anglicans like to talk about the Incarnation; that we look especially for God in the world, not just in the Bible or in Church. I like that mix of secular and sacred, in my denomination and my seminary - communion wine and beers around the fire, chapel and student lounge, saints and goblins.
It's an archaic use (for biblical Greek!) of the dative--the dative is functioning as a genitive, so it says "the character of a man is his spirit/soul." Since this lounge was the only area of the seminary where ladies were originally permitted, it essentially is a slogan encouraging good behaviour.
ReplyDelete(I won't claim any special Greek knowledge--we had our professor help us with this last year)
I was never good at ALL CAPS Greek, but what Joe says makes me think it might be Heraclitus: A man's soul is his daimon.
ReplyDeleteGoogle says, yep, that's it:
http://www.jstor.org/view/00318299/ap030107/03a00030/0
You aren't the first to wonder -- Beth and Jane asked about this a few years ago.
ReplyDelete