From: Peter Phillips (p.m.phillips@cliff.shef.ac.uk)
Date: Mon Jan 26 1998 - 03:30:47 EST
Yes OK, bless Euclid. Yes, thankyou for the kind soul who shared the real
meaning of quod and quid but my question remains - can you have a gerund
with the present tense and if so why not here?
Pete
----------
From: Paul S. Dixon [SMTP:dixonps@juno.com]
Sent: 23 January 1998 17:39
To: p.m.phillips@cliff.shef.ac.uk
Cc: b-greek@virginia.edu
Subject: Re: QED
On Fri, 23 Jan 1998 13:45:30 -0000 Peter Phillips
<p.m.phillips@cliff.shef.ac.uk> writes:
>As everyone else seems to have had a go at this, I always thought that
>it was "Quod\Quid est demonstrandum". Unfortunately, I don't have my
>Latin grammar here in my office - it's at home. So which is it? Surely
you
>can have a gerundive with the present to mean "that which must be
>demonstrated" - i.e "Prove it". I never did any Euclid but I hope that
and the >fact that this has nothing to do at all with B-Greek or the NT
doesn;t debar
>this message or result in flames and other such nonsense.
Thanks for bringing up Euclid in this context. That reminded me of
Euclid's 5th postulate (in plane geometry). You know, Euclid's 5
postulates are the basis of plane geometry. Well, several hundred years
ago certain famous mathematicians became convinced Euclid's 5 postulates
could be reduced to only 4 and that the 5th postulate could be proved.
I forget their names right now (sigh; Reimann suddenly pops up), but they
became so sure it could be proved that at least 2 of them dedicated their
lives to proving it. BTW, Euclid's 5th postulate says that through a
point not on a line in a plane, one and only line can be drawn parallel
to that line. This is true, of course, but can you prove it?
Much to Reimann's chagrin he died convinced it could be proved, though he
failed to prove it. Many have tried since, but failed. The epitaph on
their gravestones might well be: "Euclid's 5th; Q.E.D. (quod erat
demonstrandum - which was to be proved or demonstrated)". Of course,
their failure resulted in the establishment of non-Euclidean geometries
based upon the assumption that Euclid's 5 postulate was not true. In
such systems one can prove all kinds of absurdities (i.e, things we know
not to be true intuitively and which contradict Euclidean geometry which
corresponds to reality and truth), such as the sum of the angles of a
triangle is greater than 180 degrees.
I always found this particularly instructive. One invalid assumption can
greatly affect our exegesis and theology. It is always good to identify
our assumptions and to review them from time to time, especially if some
of our conclusions contradict other truth.
Paul Dixon
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