Lars Rydbeck

  Philosophical Conversion: Experiences of Being Re-born in Pre-Christian Greek Times Lars Rydbeck The aim of this paper is to draw attention to fragments of Menander that I consider important parallel materials to the New Testament (NT). These texts have not received the attention they deserve in NT scholarship. The points of contact with the NT texts lie in their description of the human condition and a concept of conversion. The texts are monologues spoken by characters in the plays, and this makes their interpretation difficult. Still, the difference in genre between the New Comedy of Menander and the NT texts should not prevent us from examining correspondences between them. An obvious difference between the NT and Menander is that, in  Menander’s  plays, it is always possible to assume an ironic distance, and that the words a character speaks are there only for the sake of characterization or some other purely dramatic purpose. While some NT authors also know how to characterize

Detta inlägg är en engelsk översättning av "Mina lärare i de klassiska ämnena 1949-1963". Letar för närvarande efter en tidskrift som vill publicera min text. In the Great Hall of Memory --- In aula ingenti memoriae My teachers in Classical studies 1949 - 1963   I am going to talk a bit about what I remember, and I hope I can avoid getting things mixed up. I have chosen as title In the Great Hall of Memory not in order to be amusing in any way by alluding to the Great Hall at the Academic Society, but because some of you probably know that St.Augustine used the expression in Book Ten of his  Confessions (VIII 12-14).  In it, he tells us    how he calls forth his memories and then the memories come to him, but they are not the memories he wants to remember. So he waves them away “with the hand of his thought” and says: ‘No, I do not want to remember you,’ but he wants to call forth other memories instead. Whenever I pass the Classical Department I say out loud to myself two li