Noet for Classics or More?

Blessings and Peace to you, Denise, on this lovely Saturday morning!                  *smile*

                Having had a Liberal Arts Education, loaded with the Classics, I also look forward to Noet!

Thanks for sharing that particular poem this morning!               I appreciated it!

                It also gave me an opportunity to look up a few things in my library ...  I searched Invictus NEAR Henly and got 68 results in 39 articles -- one of which was this one that I found interesting -- and you may too perhaps ???

18 Among those with whom Paul met and conversed in the Agora were philosophers of the rival Stoic and Epicurean schools.

The Stoics, who claimed the Cypriot Zeno (c. 340–265 B.C.) as their founder, were so called because they met in the stoa poikili, the “painted colonnade” in the Agora, where he habitually taught in Athens. Their system aimed at living consistently with nature, and in practice they laid great emphasis on the primacy of the rational faculty in humanity, and on individual self-sufficiency. In theology they were essentially pantheistic, God being regarded as the world-soul. Their belief in a cosmopolis or world-state, in which all truly free souls had equal citizen rights, helped to break down national and class distinctions. Stoicism at its best was marked by great moral earnestness and a high sense of duty. It commended suicide as an honorable means of escape from a life that could no longer be sustained with dignity. Something of the proud spirit of personal independence which it fostered comes to expression in W. E. Henley’s Invictus:

“I thank whatever gods may be

For my unconquerable soul.”

As it happens, another English poet uses the same phrase, “whatever gods may be,” in a setting as distinctively Epicurean as Henley’s is essentially Stoic. That is A. C. Swinburne in The Garden of Proserpine:

“From too much love of living,

From hope and fear set free,

We thank with brief thanksgiving

Whatever gods may be

That no life lives for ever;

That dead men rise up never;

That even the weariest river

Winds somewhere safe to sea.”

The Epicurean school, founded by Epicurus (340–270 B.C.), member of a family of Athenian settlers on Samos, based its ethical theory on the atomic physics of Democritus and presented pleasure as being the chief end in life, the pleasure most worth enjoying being a life of tranquillity (ataraxia), free from pain, disturbing passions, and superstitious fears (including in particular the fear of death). It did not deny the existence of gods, but maintained that they took no interest in the life of men and women.

Stoicism and Epicureanism represented alternative attempts in pre-Christian paganism to come to terms with life, especially in times of uncertainty and hardship; post-Christian paganism has never been able to devise anything appreciably better. But Stoics and Epicureans alike, much as they might differ from each other, agreed at least on this: that the new-fangled message brought by this Jew of Tarsus was not one that could appeal to reasonable people. They looked on him as a retailer of secondhand scraps of philosophy, “a picker-up of learning’s crumbs” (like Browning’s Karshish), a type of itinerant peddler of religion not unknown in the Agora, and they used a term of disparaging Athenian slang to describe him.³⁴ Others preferred to class him as a propagandist for foreign divinities—he spoke of Jesus and Anastasis (the Greek word for “resurrection”), and to some of his hearers these two words sounded as if they denoted the personified and divinized powers of “healing” and “restoration.”³⁵

19–20 But there was in Athens a venerable institution, the Court of the Areopagus, which exercised jurisdiction in matters of religion and morals. This aristocratic body, of venerable antiquity, received its name from the Areopagus, the “hill of Ares” (the Greek god of war), southwest of the Acropolis, on which it traditionally met. At the time with which we are dealing it held its ordinary meetings in the Royal Colonnade (stoa basileios), in the northwest corner of the Agora.³⁶ (It continued to meet on the Areopagus to judge cases of homicide.) Its traditional power was curtailed with the growth of Athenian democracy in the fifth century B.C., but in Roman times its authority was enhanced and it commanded great respect.³⁷ Before this body, then, Paul was brought, not to stand trial in a forensic sense, nor yet to be examined with a view to being licensed as a public lecturer,³⁸ but simply to have an opportunity of expounding his teaching before experts.^[1]

Thank you, George!      *smile*                    I'm truly grateful for that "reference"!       Indeed!

                    I was looking for it there; but, somehow, I missed it!

I have lots of poetry on my iPad that I often read in the evenings, and this will be added!

                               Thanks again, Denise, for your original reference..          *smile*

                Psalm 29:11

Speaking of Verbum, what do you think of the plus up grade on Capstone as to both content and new functionality?

I have said it before and will probably say it again, as a Chemistry major in college, with graduate degrees in Ministry, Computer Science, and Counseling (in that order [:)]), I would love to have the tools of LOGOS, Verbum, Noet, etc., available as I made my way through my text books - regardless of the field.  With the most advance highlighting tools available in any e-reader that I am aware of, it could support almost any field of study.

Diversifying into different fields takes a commitment and time - but I could easily see LOGOS becoming the standard e-reader for academics in many different disciplines.  For the students of the future, and for the continued success of LOGOS, I hope that it can find a way to do exactly that.

Sorry to beat my drum again, but this is what I see LOGOS eventually going.

  It also gave me an opportunity to look up a few things in my library ...  I searched Invictus NEAR Henly and got 68 results in 39 articles -- one of which was this one that I found interesting -- and you may too perhaps ???

18 Among those with whom Paul met and conversed in the Agora were philosophers of the rival Stoic and Epicurean schools.

Mr. Murray, do you by any chance have a citation for this article/book?

~Butters   

                   That's simply a quotation from "The Book of Acts" - Bible Commentary - by F.F. Bruce - NICNT - https://www.logos.com/product/37579/the-new-international-commentary-on-the-new-testament-the-book-of-the-acts

Reference = Bruce, F. F. (1988). The Book of the Acts (pp. 330–332). Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. (see very end of my post re. this!)    *smile*

Edit!            I'm leaving my Study for a while!               If you want a longer quote - or another reference - please post back --    I'll do the best I can when I get back!              *smile*