The font in Christ’s Chapel
someone to have done something. Commands should be about ‘this instant’, the ‘here and now’. Latin h as a future imperative, for situations that arise at subsequent points. The ‘thou shalt’s’ and ‘thou shalt not’s’ of the Ten Commandments render the Hebrew future imperative in English. Greek lacks future imperative forms, though descriptive grammar assures us that the mood’s tenses refer to the future. Why isn’t the present imperative used here ( nidse )? What we can say is that nipson appears here schematis causa , ‘for the sake of a [very special] figure of speech’ . In ancient Greek the aorist tense in the non-indicative moods (of which the imperative is one) can be used aspectually , that is to say, to refer not to when the action is done, but to the character of the action. A present imperative would order one to do something and keep on doing it, or to be something indefinitely (‘don’t worry! Be happy!), whereas an aorist imperative wants its action done straightaway and, usually, once. So, this NIPSON, an aorist imperative, commands us to wash now, this instant.
Syntax (arrangement; roughly speaking, word order)
The order of the words is as in English. This is what one would almost never expect of formal Greek.
Semantics (meaning)
This is where I begin to rubmy hands together with glee. Herewith are the fruits of my dictionary study.
NIS/DO (the primary form of the verb, found in boldface type as the lexicon’s main entry) means (generally) purge, cleanse and (commonly) wash off, wash part (of the person) . This verb, when applied to humans, ordinarily refers to action directed to the hands and feet. A different verb, LUOMAI, from whose root English derives ablution (through Latin), serves for washing the entire body, i.e. bathing. NIS/DO is appropriate, then, since a font is not a tub. The body part affected here, however, OP/SIN, is neither the hands nor the feet, but the head. More specifically, it’s the face. More specifically than that, it’s facial features. More specifically than those, it’s (collectively) the eyes; there seems to be a natural progression here. An aspect of semantics is change in meanings over time. One type of such change is generalization and narrowing . We’ve seen restriction in this advancement of thought. Yet if eyes are windows into the soul and, tomymind, mirrors of it, and its lenses, doesn’t that expand their reference? Isn’t this an extension of meaning that comports more with the general definition of our verb above? Moving from washing to cleaning , even more so to cleansing , haven’t we passed from corporal to moral hygiene? And with purging we seem to have the presumption of guilt. Etymology (word derivation ) I have mentioned Latin, and will refer to it again; but I must emphasize that Latin and Greek are different languages. They are daughter languages, however, of their Proto-Indo-Europeanmother, and as such share the traits of siblings. The roots okw and weid are in their DNA. From weid English derives, through Latin, ‘view’, and through Greek, ‘kaleidoscope’, both designating something seen or for seeing. More interestingly, ‘optics’ (from Greek) and ‘ferocious’ (by way of Latin) – both derived from okw – denote appearance, whereas ‘oculist’ (via Latin) and ‘myopic’ (of Greek origin) refer to the organ of sight itself, while stemming from the same radical. I like ‘visage’ as a rendering of OP/SIN because, in this antiquated noun, thoughts of a person’s countenance and the human e yeball seem to blend.
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