Kata Matthaion

Yesterday we had a most incredible Greek lesson. I can’t say that there was any moment at which a penny dropped regarding a complex grammatical point – I remain relatively ignorant of such things; in fact, I feel less knowledgeable than I did before. The lesson was remarkable rather for the tangents through which the conversation meandered.
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To start with, one of the ‘students’, a very nice retired RE teacher, who comes just for the fun of it, wished to tell us, before the lesson got underway, about a friend of hers in Georgetown, Guyana. Apparently, the police came in the night and took away 350 men from their church for no good reason. The Lecturer at this point sensitively said, ‘I feel you’d like us to pray’, but equally sensitively, didn’t pray; one of the students is an atheist/agnostic and I imagine the university has rules about that kind of thing (praying in class I mean, not being athiest/agnostic). So, after a pause of about five seconds he brought us on to the Greek bit.
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Indeed, the lecturer showed himself to be a most thoughtful and sensitive character as the lecture went on. Somehow, about half an hour later he was questioning the value of doing theology. First, referring to understanding as children, and how much those with learning difficulties can understand. Then, about how most ‘normal’ people can only understand a little really, and even those who like him can spend their whole lives studying these things don’t really know any more. ‘One is left feeling absolutely dependent’ he said, I wanted to shout out, ‘Schleiermacher’ to show that I knew something but it didn't seem to fit with his humbling remark.

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He went on to talk about the lack of reflection on practice/behaviour in Christian traditions too. I'm not sure whether he meant it on a personal or corporate level or both but I was impressed by his thoughtfulness.
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It might have been in response to the comment about being dependent, or possibly something completely unrelated, when another student said something like, ‘being an atheist, er, well, agnostic the simplicity of it appeals…’ Unfortunately, what he said was so simple that I didn’t understand it and I don’t know what simple thing it is that he finds appealing.
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The same student also later revealed, quite naturally, that he’d read part of Plato’s Republic in Greek, possibly during his A-levels. I felt terribly ignorant and uneducated at this point.
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The lecturer later told us that he agreed with J. A. T. Robinson about the priority of John, which is quite unusual among NT scholars. (J. A. T. Robinson tutored J. C. O’Neill on his Doctorate, J. C. O’Neill tutored Jim Bewick and Jim Bewick taught me, among many other grateful, and not so grateful, souls) You might think this is to be expected in such a class but we were translating Matthew not John and it really wasn’t a natural move at all, although it seemed quite natural at the time.
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Somewhere in the midst of all this we went through about 30 verses from the sermon on the mount, which might have been the spring board for some of the wider discussion.
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I can’t remember all the other digressions the class went through but I know that I left the class feeling that we had bonded in some way. I also felt that the undergraduates were far more knowledgeable than me and that their Greek translation was more fluent. Furthermore, the lecturer, Phillip Burton, had shot-up in my estimation – that’s not to suggest that I didn’t respect him before.
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No doubt, I’ve distorted everything that happened in the class through misunderstanding and defective memory but it’s a special memory for me so it might be convenient to keep it that way. (Perhaps that's what it's like to compose a gospel)