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Hypnos

In Greek mythology, Hypnos (Ancient Greek: Ὕπνος, 'sleep'), also spelled Hypnus, is the personification of sleep; the Roman equivalent is known as Somnus. His name is the origin of the word hypnosis. Pausanias wrote that Hypnos was the dearest friend of the Muses.

Etymology
According to the Dutch linguist Robert S. P. Beekes, the god's name derives from the Proto-Indo-European root *sup-no- 'sleep'.

Description
Hypnos is usually the fatherless son of Nyx ("The Night"), although sometimes Nyx's consort Erebus ("The Darkness") is named as his father. His twin brother is Thanatos ("Death"). Both siblings live in the underworld (Hades). According to rumors, Hypnos lived in a big cave, which the river Lethe ("Forgetfulness") comes from and where night and day meet. His bed is made of ebony, and on the entrance of the cave grow several poppies and other soporific plants. No light and no sound would ever enter his grotto. According to Homer, he lives on the island Lemnos, which later on has been claimed to be his very own dream island. He is said to be a calm and gentle god, as he helps humans in need and, due to their sleep, owns half of their lives.

Family
Hypnos lived next to his twin brother, Thanatos (Θάνατος, "death"), in the Underworld, where the rays of the sun never reach them.

Hypnos' mother was Nyx (Νύξ, "Night"), the goddess of Night, without a father. However, sometimes he was the son of Nyx and Erebus, the god of Darkness. Nyx was a dreadful and powerful goddess, and even Zeus feared to enter her realm.

His wife, Pasithea, was one of the youngest of the Charites and was promised to him by Hera, who is the goddess of marriage and birth.

Hypnos in the Iliad
Hypnos used his powers to trick Zeus. Hypnos was able to trick him and help the Danaans win the Trojan War. During the war, Hera loathed her brother and husband, Zeus, so she devised a plot to trick him. She decided that to trick him she needed to make him so enamored with her that he would fall for the trick. So she washed herself with ambrosia and anointed herself with oil, made especially for her to make herself impossible for Zeus to resist. She wove flowers through her hair, put on three brilliant pendants for earrings, and donned a wondrous robe. She then called for Aphrodite, the goddess of love, and asked her for a charm that would ensure that her trick would not fail. To procure the charm, however, she lied to Aphrodite because they sided on opposite sides of the war. She told Aphrodite that she wanted the charm to help herself and Zeus stop fighting. Aphrodite willingly agreed. Hera was almost ready to trick Zeus, but she needed the help of Hypnos, who had tricked Zeus once before.

Hera called on Hypnos and asked him to help her by putting Zeus to sleep. Hypnos was reluctant because the last time he had put the god to sleep, he was furious when he awoke. It was Hera who had asked him to trick Zeus the first time as well. She was furious that Heracles, Zeus' son, sacked the city of the Trojans. So she had Hypnos put Zeus to sleep, and set blasts of angry winds upon the sea while Heracles was still sailing home. When Zeus awoke he was furious and went on a rampage looking for Hypnos. Hypnos managed to avoid Zeus by hiding with his mother, Nyx. This made Hypnos reluctant to accept Hera's proposal and help her trick Zeus again. Hera first offered him a beautiful golden seat that can never fall apart and a footstool to go with it. He refused this first offer, remembering the last time he tricked Zeus. Hera finally got him to agree by promising that he would be married to Pasithea, one of the youngest Graces, whom he had always wanted to marry. Hypnos made her swear by the river Styx and call on the gods of the underworld to be witnesses so that he would be ensured that he would marry Pasithea.

Hera went to see Zeus on Gargarus, the topmost peak of Mount Ida. Zeus was extremely taken by her and suspected nothing as Hypnos was shrouded in a thick mist and hidden upon a pine tree that was close to where Hera and Zeus were talking. Zeus asked Hera what she was doing there and why she had come from Olympus, and she told him the same lie she told Aphrodite. She told him that she wanted to go help her parent stop quarreling and she stopped there to consult him because she didn't want to go without his knowledge and have him be angry with her when he found out. Zeus said that she could go any time and that she should postpone her visit and stay there with him so they could enjoy each other's company. He told her that he was never in love with anyone as much as he loved her at that moment. He took her in his embrace and Hypnos went to work putting him to sleep, with Hera in his arms. While this went on, Hypnos traveled to the ships of the Achaeans to tell Poseidon, God of the Sea, that he could now help the Danaans and give them a victory while Zeus was sleeping. This is where Hypnos leaves the story, leaving Poseidon eager to help the Danaans. Thanks to Hypnos helping to trick Zeus, the war changed its course in Hera's favor, and Zeus never found out that Hypnos had tricked him one more time.

Hypnos and Endymion
According to a passage in Deipnosophistae, the sophist and dithyrambic poet Licymnius of Chios tells a different tale about the Endymion myth, in which Hypnos loves Endymion and does not close the eyes of his beloved even while he is asleep, but lulls him to rest with eyes wide open so that he may without interruption enjoy the pleasure of gazing at them.

Hypnos in art
Hypnos appears in numerous works of art, most of which are vases. An example of one vase that Hypnos is featured on is called "Ariadne Abandoned by Theseus," which is part of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston's collection. In this vase, Hypnos is shown as a winged god dripping Lethean water upon the head of Ariadne as she sleeps.

There are only three bronze statues featuring Hypnos known to be found in the Roman world. The first one was found in mid-19th century in Civitella d'Arno (Italy), kept in the British Museum in London since 1868. This bronze head has wings sprouting from his temples and the hair is elaborately arranged, some tying in knots and some hanging freely from his head. The second one, a torsus, was found in Jumilla (Spain) in 1893 and is now exhibited at the Berlin antiquities collection. The most recent discovery took place in 1988 in Almedinilla (also in Spain), where bronze statue almost intact of Hypnos was found in a Roman villa dated in the 2nd century A.D. It is kept in the local History & Archaeology Museum.

The National Roman Museum of the Italian capital keeps an Hypnos marble head found in Hadrian's Villa, build around 120 AD by Emperor Hadrian in Tivoli as a retreat not far from Rome.

Words derived from Hypnos
The English word "hypnosis" is derived from his name, referring to the fact that when hypnotized, a person is put into a sleep-like state (hypnosis "sleep" + -osis "condition"). The class of medicines known as "hypnotics" which induce sleep also take their name from Hypnos.

title: Hypnos


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Holy orders

In certain Christian denominations, holy orders are the ordained ministries of bishop, priest (presbyter), and deacon, and the sacrament or rite by which candidates are ordained to those orders. Churches recognizing these orders include the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox (ιερωσύνη [hierōsynē], ιεράτευμα [hierateuma], Священство [Svyashchenstvo]), Oriental Orthodox, Anglican, Assyrian, Old Catholic, Independent Catholic and some Lutheran churches. Except for Lutherans and some Anglicans, these churches regard ordination as a sacrament (the sacramentum ordinis).

Denominations have varied conceptions of holy orders. In Anglican and some Lutheran churches the traditional orders of bishop, priest and deacon are bestowed using ordination rites contained within ordinals. The extent to which ordination is considered sacramental in these traditions has, however, been a matter of some internal dispute. Baptists are among the denominations that do not consider ministry as being sacramental in nature and would not think of it in terms of "holy orders" as such. Historically, the word "order" (Latin ordo) designated an established civil body or corporation with a hierarchy, and ordinatio meant legal incorporation into an ordo. The word "holy" refers to the church. In context, therefore, a holy order is set apart for ministry in the church. Other positions, such as pope, patriarch, cardinal, monsignor, archbishop, archimandrite, archpriest, protopresbyter, hieromonk, protodeacon and archdeacon, are not sacramental orders but specialized ministries.

Anglicanism
The Anglican churches hold their bishops to be in apostolic succession, although there is some difference of opinion with regard to whether ordination is to be regarded as a sacrament. The Anglican Articles of Religion hold that only Baptism and the Lord's Supper are to be counted as sacraments of the gospel, and assert that other rites 'commonly called Sacraments' by other denominations (e.g. Roman Catholicism), were not ordained by Christ in the Gospel. They do not have the nature of a sacrament of the Gospel in the absence of any physical matter such as the water in Baptism and the bread and wine in the Eucharist. Various editions of the Book of Common Prayer and other Anglican liturgical texts provide rites for ordination of bishops, priests and deacons. Only bishops may ordain people. Within Anglicanism, three bishops are normally required for ordination to the episcopate, while one bishop is sufficient for performing ordinations to the priesthood and diaconate.

Catholicism

The ministerial orders of the Catholic Church include the orders of bishops, deacons and presbyters, which in Latin is sacerdos. The ordained priesthood and common priesthood (or priesthood of all the baptized) are different in function and essence.

A distinction is made between "priest" and "presbyter". In the 1983 Code of Canon Law, "The Latin words sacerdos and sacerdotium are used to refer in general to the ministerial priesthood shared by bishops and presbyters. The words presbyter, presbyterium and presbyteratus refer to priests [in the English use of the word] and presbyters".

While the consecrated life is neither clerical nor lay by definition, clerics can be members of institutes of consecrated or secular (diocesan) life.

Eastern Christianity

The Eastern Orthodox Church considers ordination (known as cheirotonia, "laying on of hands") to be a sacred mystery (μυστήριο, what in the West is called a sacrament). Although all other mysteries may be performed by a presbyter, ordination may only be conferred by a bishop, and the ordination of a bishop may only be performed by several bishops together. Cheirotonia always takes place during the Divine Liturgy.

It was the mission of the Apostles to go forth into all the world and preach the Gospel, baptizing those who believed in the name of the Holy Trinity. In the Early Church those who presided over congregations were referred to variously as episcopos (bishop) or presbyteros (priest). These successors of the Apostles were ordained to their office by the laying on of hands, and according to Eastern Orthodox theology formed a living, organic link with the Apostles, and through them with Jesus Christ himself.

The Eastern Orthodox Church also has ordination to minor orders (known as cheirothesia, "imposition of hands") which is performed outside of the Divine Liturgy, typically by a bishop, although certain archimandrites of stavropegial monasteries may bestow cheirothesia on members of their communities.

A bishop is the collector of the money of the diocese and the living Vessel of Grace through whom the energeia (divine grace) of the Holy Spirit flows into the rest of the church. A bishop is consecrated through the laying on of hands by several bishops. (With the consent of several other bishops, a single bishop has performed the ordination of another bishop in emergency situations, such as times of persecution.) The consecration of a bishop takes place near the beginning of the Liturgy, since a bishop can, in addition to performing the Mystery of the Eucharist, also ordain priests and deacons. Before the commencement of the Holy Liturgy, the bishop-elect professes, in the middle of the church before the seated bishops who will consecrate him, in detail the doctrines of the Orthodox Christian Faith and pledges to observe the canons of the Apostles and Councils, the Typikon and customs of the Orthodox Church and to obey ecclesiastical authority. After the Little Entrance, the arch-priest and arch-deacon conduct the bishop-elect before the Royal Gates where he is met by the bishops and kneels before the altar on both knees. The Gospel Book is laid over his head and the consecrating bishops lay their hands upon the Gospel Book, while the prayers of ordination are read by the eldest bishop. After this, the newly consecrated bishop ascends the synthranon (bishop's throne in the sanctuary) for the first time. Customarily, the newly consecrated bishop ordains a priest and a deacon at the Liturgy during which he is consecrated.

A priest may serve only at the pleasure of his bishop. A bishop bestows faculties (permission to minister within his diocese) giving a priest chrism and an antimins; he may withdraw faculties and demand the return of these items. The ordination of a priest occurs before the Anaphora (Eucharistic Prayer) in order that he may on the same day take part in the celebration of the Eucharist: During the Great Entrance, the candidate for ordination carries the Aër (chalice veil) over his head (rather than on his shoulder, as a deacon otherwise carries it then) as a symbol of giving up his diaconate, and comes last in the procession and stands at the end of the pair of lines of the priests. After the Aër is taken from the candidate to cover the chalice and diskos, a chair is brought for the bishop to sit on by the northeast corner of the Holy Table (altar). Two deacons go to priest-elect who, at that point, had been standing alone in the middle of the church, and bow him down to the west (to the people) and to the east (to the clergy), asking their consent by saying "Command ye!" and then lead him through the holy doors of the altar where the archdeacon asks the bishop's consent, saying, "Command, most sacred master!" after which a priest escorts the candidate three times around the Holy Table, during which he kisses each corner of the Holy Table as well as the bishop's epigonation and right hand and prostrates himself before the holy table at each circuit. The candidate is then taken to the southeast corner of the Holy Table and kneels on both knees, resting his forehead on the edge of the Holy Table. The ordaining bishop then places his omophor and right hand over the ordinand's head and recites aloud the first Prayer of Cheirotonia and then prays silently the other two prayers of cheirotonia while a deacon quietly recites a litany and the clergy, then the congregation, chant "Lord, have mercy". Afterwards, the bishop brings the newly ordained priest to stand in the Holy Doors and presents him to the faithful. He then clothes the priest in each of his sacerdotal vestments, at each of which the people sing, Worthy!. Later, after the Epiklesis of the Liturgy, the bishop hands him a portion of the Lamb (Host) saying: "Receive thou this pledge, and preserve it whole and unharmed until thy last breath, because thou shalt be held to an accounting therefore in the second and terrible Coming of our great Lord, God, and Saviour, Jesus Christ."

A deacon may not perform any sacrament and performs no liturgical services on his own but serves only as an assistant to a priest and may not even vest without the blessing of a priest. The ordination of a deacon occurs after the Anaphora (Eucharistic Prayer) since his role is not in performing the Holy Mystery but consists only in serving; the ceremony is much the same as at the ordination of a priest, but the deacon-elect is presented to the people and escorted to the holy doors by two sub-deacons (his peers, analogous to the two deacons who so present a priest-elect), is escorted three times around the Holy Table by a deacon, and he kneels on only one knee during the Prayer of Cheirotonia. After being vested as a deacon and given a liturgical fan (ripidion or hexapterygion), he is led to the side of the Holy Table where he uses the ripidion to gently fan the Holy Gifts (consecrated Body and Blood of Christ).

Lutheranism
Lutherans reject the Roman Catholic understanding of holy orders because they do not think sacerdotalism is supported by the Bible. Martin Luther taught that each individual was expected to fulfill his God-appointed task in everyday life. The modern usage of the term vocation as a life-task was first employed by Martin Luther. In Luther's Small Catechism, the holy orders include but are not limited to the following: bishops, pastors, preachers, governmental offices, citizens, husbands, wives, children, employees, employers, young people, and widows. However, also according to the Book of Concord: "But if ordination be understood as applying to the ministry of the Word, we are not unwilling to call ordination a sacrament. For the ministry of the Word has God's command and glorious promises, Rom. 1:16: The Gospel is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth. Likewise, Isa. 55:11: So shall My Word be that goeth forth out of My mouth; it shall not return unto Me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please. ...If ordination be understood in this way, neither will we refuse to call the imposition of hands a sacrament. For the Church has the command to appoint ministers, which should be most pleasing to us, because we know that God approves this ministry, and is present in the ministry [that God will preach and work through men and those who have been chosen by men]."

Process and sequence

The sequence in which holy orders are received are: minor orders, deacon, priest, bishop.

For Catholics, it is typical in the years of seminary training that a man will be ordained to the diaconate, which Catholics since the Second Vatican Council sometimes call the "transitional diaconate" to distinguish men bound for priesthood from permanent deacons. They are licensed to preach sermons (under certain circumstances a permanent deacon may not receive faculties to preach), to perform baptisms, and to witness Catholic marriages, but to perform no other sacraments. They assist at the Eucharist or the Mass, but are not able to consecrate the bread and wine. Normally, after six months or more as a transitional deacon, a man will be ordained to the priesthood. Priests are able to preach, perform baptisms, confirm (with special dispensation from their ordinary), witness marriages, hear confessions and give absolutions, anoint the sick, and celebrate the Eucharist or the Mass.

Orthodox seminarians are typically tonsured as readers before entering the seminary, and may later be made subdeacons or deacons; customs vary between seminaries and between Orthodox jurisdictions. Some deacons remain permanently in the diaconate while most subsequently are ordained as priests. Orthodox clergy are typically either married or monastic. Monastic deacons are called hierodeacons, monastic priests are called hieromonks. Orthodox clergy who marry must do so prior to ordination to the subdiaconate (or diaconate, according to local custom) and typically one is either tonsured a monk or married before ordination. A deacon or priest may not marry, or remarry if widowed, without abandoning his clerical office. Often, widowed priests take monastic vows. Orthodox bishops are always monks; a single or widowed man may be elected a bishop but he must be tonsured a monk before consecration as a bishop.

For Anglicans, a person is usually ordained a deacon once he (or she) has completed training at a theological college. The historic practice of a bishop tutoring a candidate himself ("reading for orders") is still to be found. The candidate then typically serves as an assistant curate and may later be ordained as a priest at the discretion of the bishop. Other deacons may choose to remain in this order. Anglican deacons can preach sermons, perform baptisms and conduct funerals, but, unlike priests, cannot celebrate the Eucharist. In most branches of the Anglican church, women can be ordained as priests, and in some of them, can also be ordained bishops.

Bishops are chosen from among priests in churches that adhere to Catholic usage. In the Roman Catholic Church, bishops, like priests, are celibate and thus unmarried; further, a bishop is said to possess the fullness of the sacrament of holy orders, empowering him to ordain deacons, priests, and – with papal consent – other bishops. If a bishop, especially one acting as an ordinary – a head of a diocese or archdiocese – is to be ordained, three bishops must usually co-consecrate him with one bishop, usually an archbishop or the bishop of the place, being the chief consecrating prelate.

Among Eastern Rite Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches, which permit married priests, bishops must either be unmarried or agree to abstain from contact with their wives. It is a common misconception that all such bishops come from religious orders; while this is generally true, it is not an absolute rule. In the case of both Catholics – (Western and) Eastern Catholic, Oriental Orthodox and Eastern Orthodox, they are usually leaders of territorial units called dioceses (or its equivalent in the east, an eparchy). Only bishops can validly administer the sacrament of holy orders.

Recognition of other churches' orders
The Roman Catholic Church unconditionally recognizes the validity of ordinations in the Eastern churches. Some Eastern Orthodox churches reordain Catholic priests who convert while others accept their Roman Catholic ordination using the concept of economia (church economy).

Anglican churches claim to have maintained apostolic succession. The succession of Anglican bishops is not universally recognized, however. The Roman Catholic Church judged Anglican orders invalid when Pope Leo XIII in 1896 wrote in Apostolicae curae that Anglican orders lack validity because the rite by which priests were ordained was not correctly worded from 1547 to 1553 and from 1559 to the time of Archbishop William Laud (Archbishop of Canterbury 1633–1645). The papacy claimed the form and matter was inadequate to make a Catholic bishop. The actual "mechanical" succession, prayer and laying on hands, was not disputed. Two of the four consecrators of Matthew Parker in 1559 had been consecrated using the Edwardine Ordinals and two using the Roman Pontifical. Nonetheless, they believed that this caused a break of continuity in apostolic succession, making all further ordinations null and void.

Eastern Orthodox bishops have, on occasion, granted "economy" when Anglican priests convert to Orthodoxy. Various Orthodox churches have also declared Anglican orders valid subject to a finding that the bishops in question did indeed maintain the true faith, the Orthodox concept of apostolic succession being one in which the faith must be properly adhered to and transmitted, not simply that the ceremony by which a man is made a bishop is conducted correctly.

Changes in the Anglican ordinals since King Edward VI, and a fuller appreciation of the pre-Reformation ordinals, suggest that the correctness of the enduring dismissal of Anglican orders is questionable. To reduce doubt concerning Anglican apostolic succession, especially since the 1930 Bonn agreement between the Anglican and Old Catholic churches, some Anglican bishops have included among their consecrators bishops of the Old Catholic Church, whose holy orders are recognised as valid and regular by the Roman Catholic Church.

Neither Roman Catholics nor Anglicans recognize the validity of ordinations of ministers in Protestant churches that do not maintain apostolic succession; but some Anglicans, especially Low Church or Evangelical ones, commonly treat Protestant ministers and their sacraments as valid. Rome also does not recognize the apostolic succession of those Lutheran bodies which retained apostolic succession.

Officially, the Anglican Communion accepts the ordinations of those denominations which are in full communion with their own churches, such as the Lutheran state churches of Scandinavia. Those clergy may preside at services requiring a priest if one is not otherwise available.

Marriage and holy orders
Married men may be ordained to the diaconate as permanent deacons, but in the Latin Church of the Catholic Church generally may not be ordained to the priesthood. In the Eastern Catholic Churches and in the Eastern Orthodox Church, married deacons may be ordained priests but may not become bishops. Bishops in the Eastern Rites and the Eastern Orthodox churches are almost always drawn from among monks, who have taken a vow of celibacy. They may be widowers, though; it is not required of them never to have been married.

In some cases, widowed permanent deacons have been ordained to the priesthood. There have been some situations in which men previously married and ordained to the priesthood in an Anglican church or in a Lutheran church have been ordained to the Catholic priesthood and allowed to function much as an Eastern Rite priest but in a Latin Church setting. This is never sub conditione (conditionally), as there is in Catholic canon law no true priesthood in Protestant denominations. Such ordination may only happen with the approval of the priest's Bishop and a special permission by the Pope.

Anglican clergy may be married or may marry after ordination. In the Old Catholic Church and the Independent Catholic Churches there are no ordination restrictions related to marriage.

Other concepts of ordination
Ordination ritual and procedures vary by denomination. Different churches and denominations specify more or less rigorous requirements for entering into office, and the process of ordination is likewise given more or less ceremonial pomp depending on the group. Many Protestants still communicate authority and ordain to office by having the existing overseers physically lay hands on the candidates for office.

Methodist churches
The American Methodist model is an episcopal system loosely based on the Anglican model, as the Methodist Church arose from the Anglican Church. It was first devised under the leadership of Bishops Thomas Coke and Francis Asbury of the Methodist Episcopal Church in the late 18th century. In this approach, an elder (or 'presbyter') is ordained to word (preaching and teaching), sacrament (administering Baptism and the Lord's Supper), order (administering the life of the church and, in the case of bishops, ordaining others for mission and ministry), and service. A deacon is a person ordained only to word and service.

In the United Methodist Church, for instance, seminary graduates are examined and approved by the Conference Board of Ordained Ministry and then the Clergy Session. They are accepted as "probationary (provisional) members of the conference." The resident bishop may commission them to full-time ministry as "provisional" ministers. (Before 1996, the graduate was ordained as a transitional deacon at this point, a provisional role since eliminated. The order of deacon is now a separate and distinct clergy order in the United Methodist Church.) After serving the probationary period, of a minimum of two years, the probationer is then examined again and either continued on probation, discontinued altogether, or approved for ordination. Upon final approval by the Clergy Session of the Conference, the probationer becomes a full member of the Conference and is then ordained as an elder or deacon by the resident bishop. Those ordained as elders are members of the Order of Elders, and those ordained deacons are members of the Order of Deacons.

John Wesley appointed Thomas Coke (above mentioned as bishop) as 'Superintendent', his translation of the Greek episcopos ("overseer") – which is normally translated 'bishop' in English. The British Methodist Conference has two distinct orders of presbyter and deacon. It does not have bishops as a separate order of ministry. The British Methodist Church has more than 500 superintendents, who are not a separate order of ministry but a role within the order of presbyters. The roles normally undertaken by bishops are expressed in ordaining presbyters and deacons by the annual Conference through its president (or a past president); in confirmation by all presbyters; in local oversight by superintendents; in regional oversight by chairs of Districts.

Presbyterian churches
Presbyterian churches, following their Scottish forebears, reject the traditions surrounding overseers and instead identify the offices of bishop (episkopos in Greek) and elder (presbuteros in Greek, from which the term "presbyterian" comes). The two terms seem to be used interchangeably in the Bible (compare Titus 1.5–9 and I Tim. 3.2–7). Their form of church governance is known as presbyterian polity. While there is increasing authority with each level of gathering of elders ('Session' over a congregation or parish, then presbytery, then possibly a synod, then the General Assembly), there is no hierarchy of elders. Each elder has an equal vote at the court on which they stand.

Elders are usually chosen at their local level, either elected by the congregation and approved by the Session, or appointed directly by the Session. Some churches place limits on the term that the elders serve, while others ordain elders for life.

Presbyterians also ordain (by laying on of hands) ministers of Word and Sacrament (sometimes known as 'teaching elders'). These ministers are regarded simply as Presbyters ordained to a different function, but in practice they provide the leadership for the local Session.

Some Presbyterians identify those appointed (by the laying on of hands) to serve in practical ways (Acts 6.1–7) as deacons (diakonos in Greek, meaning 'servant'). In many congregations, a group of men or women is thus set aside to deal with matters such as congregational fabric and finance, releasing elders for more 'spiritual' work. These persons may be known as 'deacons', 'board members' or 'managers', depending on the local tradition. Unlike elders and ministers, they are not usually 'ordained', and are often elected by the congregation for a set period of time.

Other Presbyterians have used an 'order of deacons' as full-time servants of the wider Church. Unlike ministers, they do not administer sacraments or routinely preach. The Church of Scotland has recently begun ordaining deacons to this role.

Unlike the Episcopalian system, but similar to the United Methodist system described above, the two Presbyterian offices are different in kind rather than in degree, since one need not be a deacon before becoming an elder. Since there is no hierarchy, the two offices do not make up an 'order' in the technical sense, but the terminology of holy orders is sometimes still developed.

Congregationalist churches
Congregationalist churches implement different schemes, but the officers usually have less authority than in the presbyterian or episcopalian forms. Some ordain only ministers and rotate members on an advisory board (sometimes called a board of elders or a board of deacons). Because the positions are by comparison less powerful, there is usually less rigor or fanfare in how officers are ordained.

Irvingian churches
Irvingian churches teach a fourfold ministry of "apostles, prophets, evangelists, and pastors."

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) accepts the legal authority of clergy to perform marriages but does not recognize any other sacraments performed by ministers not ordained to the Latter-day Saint priesthood. Although the Latter-day Saints do claim a doctrine of a certain spiritual "apostolic succession," it is significantly different from that claimed by Catholics and Protestants since there is no succession or continuity between the first century and the lifetime of Joseph Smith, the founder of the LDS church. Mormons teach that the priesthood was lost in ancient times not to be restored by Christ until the nineteenth century when it was given to Joseph Smith directly.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has a relatively open priesthood, ordaining nearly all worthy adult males and boys of the age of twelve and older. Latter-day Saint priesthood consists of two divisions: the Melchizedek Priesthood and Aaronic Priesthood. The Melchizedek Priesthood because Melchizedek was such a great high priest. Before his day it was called the Holy Priesthood, after the Order of the Son of God. But out of respect or reverence to the name of the Supreme Being, to avoid the too frequent repetition of his name, the church, in ancient days, called that priesthood after Melchizedek. The lesser priesthood is an appendage to the Melchizedek Priesthood. It is called the Aaronic Priesthood because it was conferred on Aaron and his sons throughout all their generations. The offices, or ranks, of the Melchizedek order (in roughly descending order) include apostle, seventy, patriarch, high priest, and elder. The offices of the Aaronic order are bishop, priest, teacher, and deacon. The manner of ordination consists of the laying on of hands by two or more men holding at least the office being conferred while one acts as voice in conferring the priesthood or office and usually pronounces a blessing upon the recipient. Teachers and deacons do not have the authority to ordain others to the priesthood. All church members are authorized to teach and preach regardless of priesthood ordination so long as they maintain good standing within the church. The church does not use the term "holy orders."

Community of Christ
Community of Christ has a largely volunteer priesthood, and all members of the priesthood are free to marry (as traditionally defined by the Christian community). The priesthood is divided into two orders, the Aaronic priesthood and the Melchisedec priesthood. The Aaronic order consists of the offices of deacon, teacher and priest. The Melchisedec Order consists of the offices of elder (including the specialized office of seventy) and high priest (including the specialized offices of evangelist, bishop, apostle, and prophet). Paid ministers include "appointees" and the general officers of the church, which include some specialized priesthood offices (such as the office of president, reserved for the three top members of the church leadership team). As of 1984, women have been eligible for priesthood, which is conferred through the sacrament of ordination by the laying-on-of-hands. While there is technically no age requirement for any office of priesthood, there is no automatic ordination or progression as in the LDS Church. Young people are occasionally ordained as deacon, and sometimes teacher or priest, but generally most priesthood members are called following completion of post secondary school education. In March 2007 a woman was ordained for the first time to the office of president.

Ordination of women
The Roman Catholic Church, in accordance with its understanding of the theological tradition on the issue, and the definitive clarification found in the encyclical letter Ordinatio sacerdotalis (1994) written by Pope John Paul II, officially teaches that it has no authority to ordain women as priests and thus there is no possibility of women becoming priests at any time in the future. "Ordaining" women as deaconesses is not a possibility in any sacramental sense of the diaconate, for a deaconess is not simply a female who is a deacon but instead holds a position of lay service. As such, she does not receive the sacrament of holy orders. Many Lutheran, Anglican and other Protestant churches ordain women, but in many cases, only to the office of deacon.

Various branches of the Eastern Orthodox churches, including the Greek Orthodox, currently set aside vows of deaconesses. Some churches are internally divided on whether the Scriptures permit the ordination of women. When one considers the relative size of the traditions (1.1 billion Roman Catholics, 300 million Orthodox, 590 million Protestants), it is a minority of Christian churches that ordain women. Protestants constitute about 27 percent of Christians worldwide, and most of their churches that do ordain women have only done so within the past century; moreover, denominations within the same tradition may differ with respect to women's ordination. For example, in Methodism, the Primitive Methodist Church does not ordain women, while the Free Methodist Church does ordain women.

In some traditions women may be ordained to the same orders as men. In others women are restricted from certain offices. Women may be ordained bishop in the Old Catholic churches and in the Anglican/Episcopal churches in Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Cuba, Brazil, South Africa, Canada, US, Australia, Aotearoa New Zealand and Polynesia. The Church of Ireland had installed Pat Storey in 2013. On 19 September 2013, Storey was chosen by the House of Bishops to succeed Richard Clarke as Bishop of Meath and Kildare. She was consecrated to the episcopate at Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, on 30 November 2013. She is the first woman to be elected as a bishop in the Church of Ireland and the first woman to be an Anglican Communion bishop in Ireland and Great Britain. The Church of England's General Synod voted in 2014 to allow women to be ordained to the episcopate, with Libby Lane being the first woman to be ordained bishop. Continuing Anglican churches of the world do not permit women to be ordained. In some Protestant denominations, women may serve as assistant pastors but not as pastors in charge of congregations. In some denominations, women can be ordained to be an elder or deacon. Some denominations allow for the ordination of women for certain religious orders. Within certain traditions, such as the Anglican and Lutheran, there is a diversity of theology and practice regarding ordination of women.

Ordination of LGBT clergy
The ordination of lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender clergy who are sexually active, and open about it, represents a fiercely contested subject within many mainline Protestant communities. The majority of churches are opposed to such ordinations because they view homosexuality as a sin and incompatible with Biblical teaching and traditional Christian practice. Yet there are an increasing number of Christian congregations and communities that are open to ordaining people who are gay or lesbian. These are liberal Protestant denominations, such as the Episcopal Church, the United Church of Christ, and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, plus the small Metropolitan Community Church, founded as a church intending to minister primarily to LGBT people, and the Church of Sweden where such clergy may serve in senior clerical positions. The Church of Norway has for many years had both gay and lesbian priests, even bishops, and in 2006 the first woman who was appointed a bishop in Norway came out as an active homosexual herself, and that she had been a homosexual since before she joined the church.

The issue of ordination has caused particular controversy in the worldwide Anglican Communion, following the approval of Gene Robinson to be Bishop of New Hampshire in the US Episcopal Church.

Print resources

 * Campbell, Dennis. Yoke of Obedience, 1988. ISBN 0-687-46660-1
 * Oden, Thomas. Pastoral Theology: Essentials of Ministry, 1983. ISBN 0-06-066353-7
 * Willimon, William. Calling & Character: Virtues of the Ordained Life, 2000. ISBN 0-687-09033-4
 * Willimon, William. Pastor: The Theology and Practice of Ordained Ministry, 2002. ISBN 0-687-04532-0

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Holy orders


text:
Homer

Homer (Ὅμηρος, Hómēros; born c. 8th century BC) was a Greek poet who is credited as the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, two epic poems that are foundational works of ancient Greek literature. Homer is considered one of the most revered and influential authors in history.

Homer's Iliad centers on a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles during the last year of the Trojan War. The Odyssey chronicles the ten-year journey of Odysseus, king of Ithaca, back to his home after the fall of Troy. The poems are in Homeric Greek, also known as Epic Greek, a literary language which shows a mixture of features of the Ionic and Aeolic dialects from different centuries; the predominant influence is Eastern Ionic. Most researchers believe that the poems were originally transmitted orally. Despite being predominantly known for its tragic and serious themes, the Homeric poems also contain instances of comedy and laughter.

Homer's epic poems shaped aspects of ancient Greek culture and education, fostering ideals of heroism, glory, and honor. To Plato, Homer was simply the one who "has taught Greece" (τὴν Ἑλλάδα πεπαίδευκεν, tēn Helláda pepaídeuken). In Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy, Virgil refers to Homer as "Poet sovereign", king of all poets; in the preface to his translation of the Iliad, Alexander Pope acknowledges that Homer has always been considered the "greatest of poets". From antiquity to the present day, Homeric epics have inspired many famous works of literature, music, art, and film.

The question of by whom, when, where and under what circumstances the Iliad and Odyssey were composed continues to be debated. Scholars remain divided as to whether the two works are the product of a single author. It is thought that the poems were composed at some point around the late eighth or early seventh century BC. Many accounts of Homer's life circulated in classical antiquity; the most widespread account was that he was a blind bard from Ionia, a region of central coastal Anatolia in present-day Turkey. Modern scholars consider these accounts legendary.

Works attributed to Homer

Today, only the Iliad and the Odyssey are associated with the name "Homer". In antiquity, a large number of other works were sometimes attributed to him, including the Homeric Hymns, the Contest of Homer and Hesiod, several epigrams, the Little Iliad, the Nostoi, the Thebaid, the Cypria, the Epigoni, the comic mini-epic Batrachomyomachia ("The Frog–Mouse War"), the Margites, the Capture of Oechalia, and the Phocais. These claims are not considered authentic today and were by no means universally accepted in the ancient world. As with the multitude of legends surrounding Homer's life, they indicate little more than the centrality of Homer to ancient Greek culture.

Ancient biographical traditions
Some ancient accounts about Homer were established early and repeated often. They include that Homer was blind (taking as self-referential a passage describing the blind bard Demodocus), that he resided at Chios, that he was the son of the river Meles and the nymph Critheïs, that he was a wandering bard, that he composed a varying list of other works (the "Homerica"), that he died either in Ios or after failing to solve a riddle set by fishermen, and various explanations for the name "Homer" (Ὅμηρος, Hómēros). Another tradition from the days of the Roman emperor Hadrian says Epicaste (daughter of Nestor) and Telemachus (son of Odysseus) were the parents of Homer.

The two best known ancient biographies of Homer are the Life of Homer by the Pseudo-Herodotus and the Contest of Homer and Hesiod.

In the early fourth century BC Alcidamas composed a fictional account of a poetry contest at Chalcis with both Homer and Hesiod. Homer was expected to win, and answered all of Hesiod's questions and puzzles with ease. Then, each of the poets was invited to recite the best passage from their work. Hesiod selected the beginning of Works and Days: "When the Pleiades born of Atlas ... all in due season". Homer chose a description of Greek warriors in formation, facing the foe, taken from the Iliad. Though the crowd acclaimed Homer victor, the judge awarded Hesiod the prize; the poet who praised husbandry, he said, was greater than the one who told tales of battles and slaughter.

Ancient
The study of Homer is one of the oldest topics in scholarship, dating back to antiquity. Nonetheless, the aims of Homeric studies have changed over the course of the millennia. The earliest preserved comments on Homer concern his treatment of the gods, which hostile critics such as the poet Xenophanes of Colophon denounced as immoral. The allegorist Theagenes of Rhegium is said to have defended Homer by arguing that the Homeric poems are allegories. The Iliad and the Odyssey were widely used as school texts in ancient Greek and Hellenistic cultures. They were the first literary works taught to all students. The Iliad, particularly its first few books, was far more intently studied than the Odyssey during the Hellenistic and Roman periods.

As a result of the poems' prominence in classical Greek education, extensive commentaries on them developed to explain parts that were culturally or linguistically difficult. During the Hellenistic and Roman periods, many interpreters, especially the Stoics, who believed that Homeric poems conveyed Stoic doctrines, regarded them as allegories, containing hidden wisdom. Perhaps partially because of the Homeric poems' extensive use in education, many authors believed that Homer's original purpose had been to educate. Homer's wisdom became so widely praised that he began to acquire the image of almost a prototypical philosopher. Byzantine scholars such as Eustathius of Thessalonica and John Tzetzes produced commentaries, extensions and scholia to Homer, especially in the twelfth century. Eustathius's commentary on the Iliad alone is massive, sprawling over nearly 4,000 oversized pages in a 21st-century printed version and his commentary on the Odyssey an additional nearly 2,000.

Modern
In 1488, the Greek scholar Demetrios Chalkokondyles published the editio princeps of the Homeric poems. The earliest modern Homeric scholars started with the same basic approaches towards the Homeric poems as scholars in antiquity. The allegorical interpretation of the Homeric poems that had been so prevalent in antiquity returned to become the prevailing view of the Renaissance. Renaissance humanists praised Homer as the archetypically wise poet, whose writings contain hidden wisdom, disguised through allegory. In western Europe during the Renaissance, Virgil was more widely read than Homer and Homer was often seen through a Virgilian lens.

In 1664, contradicting the widespread praise of Homer as the epitome of wisdom, François Hédelin, abbé d'Aubignac wrote a scathing attack on the Homeric poems, declaring that they were incoherent, immoral, tasteless, and without style, that Homer never existed, and that the poems were hastily cobbled together by incompetent editors from unrelated oral songs. Fifty years later, the English scholar Richard Bentley concluded that Homer did exist but that he was an obscure, prehistoric oral poet whose compositions bear little relation to the Iliad and the Odyssey as they have been passed down. According to Bentley, Homer "wrote a Sequel of Songs and Rhapsodies, to be sung by himself for small Earnings and good Cheer at Festivals and other Days of Merriment; the Ilias he wrote for men, and the Odysseis for the other Sex. These loose songs were not collected together in the Form of an epic Poem till Pisistratus' time, about 500 Years after."

Friedrich August Wolf's Prolegomena ad Homerum, published in 1795, argued that much of the material later incorporated into the Iliad and the Odyssey was originally composed in the tenth century BC in the form of short, separate oral songs, which passed through oral tradition for roughly four hundred years before being assembled into prototypical versions of the Iliad and the Odyssey in the sixth century BC by literate authors. After being written down, Wolf maintained that the two poems were extensively edited, modernized, and eventually shaped into their present state as artistic unities. Wolf and the "Analyst" school, which led the field in the nineteenth century, sought to recover the original, authentic poems which were thought to be concealed by later excrescences.

Within the Analyst school were two camps: proponents of the "lay theory", which held that the Iliad and the Odyssey were put together from a large number of short, independent songs, and proponents of the "nucleus theory", which held that Homer had originally composed shorter versions of the Iliad and the Odyssey, which later poets expanded and revised. A small group of scholars opposed to the Analysts, dubbed "Unitarians", saw the later additions as superior, the work of a single inspired poet. By around 1830, the central preoccupations of Homeric scholars, dealing with whether or not "Homer" actually existed, when and how the Homeric poems originated, how they were transmitted, when and how they were finally written down, and their overall unity, had been dubbed "the Homeric Question".

Following World War I, the Analyst school began to fall out of favor among Homeric scholars. It did not die out entirely, but it came to be increasingly seen as a discredited dead end. Starting in around 1928, Milman Parry and Albert Lord, after their studies of folk bards in the Balkans, developed the "Oral-Formulaic Theory" that the Homeric poems were originally composed through improvised oral performances, which relied on traditional epithets and poetic formulas. This theory found very wide scholarly acceptance  and explained many previously puzzling features of the Homeric poems, including their unusually archaic language, their extensive use of stock epithets, and their other "repetitive" features. Many scholars concluded that the "Homeric Question" had finally been answered.

Meanwhile, the 'Neoanalysts' sought to bridge the gap between the 'Analysts' and 'Unitarians'. The Neoanalysts sought to trace the relationships between the Homeric poems and other epic poems, which have now been lost, but of which modern scholars do possess some patchy knowledge. Neoanalysts hold that knowledge of earlier versions of the epics can be derived from anomalies of structure and detail in the surviving versions of the Iliad and Odyssey. These anomalies point to earlier versions of the Iliad in which Ajax played a more prominent role, in which the Achaean embassy to Achilles comprised different characters, and in which Patroclus was actually mistaken for Achilles by the Trojans. They point to earlier versions of the Odyssey in which Telemachus went in search of news of his father not to Menelaus in Sparta but to Idomeneus in Crete, in which Telemachus met up with his father in Crete and conspired with him to return to Ithaca disguised as the soothsayer Theoclymenus, and in which Penelope recognized Odysseus much earlier in the narrative and conspired with him in the destruction of the suitors.

Contemporary
Most contemporary scholars, although they disagree on other questions about the genesis of the poems, agree that the Iliad and the Odyssey were not produced by the same author, based on "the many differences of narrative manner, theology, ethics, vocabulary, and geographical perspective, and by the apparently imitative character of certain passages of the Odyssey in relation to the Iliad." Nearly all scholars agree that the Iliad and the Odyssey are unified poems, in that each poem shows a clear overall design and that they are not merely strung together from unrelated songs. It is also generally agreed that each poem was composed mostly by a single author, who probably relied heavily on older oral traditions. Nearly all scholars agree that the Doloneia in Book X of the Iliad is not part of the original poem, but rather a later insertion by a different poet.

Some ancient scholars believed Homer to have been an eyewitness to the Trojan War; others thought he had lived up to 500 years afterwards. Contemporary scholars continue to debate the date of the poems. A long history of oral transmission lies behind the composition of the poems, complicating the search for a precise date. At one extreme, Richard Janko has proposed a date for both poems to the eighth century BC based on linguistic analysis and statistics. Barry B. Powell dates the composition of the Iliad and the Odyssey to sometime between 800 and 750 BC, based on the statement from Herodotus, who lived in the late fifth century BC, that Homer lived four hundred years before his own time "and not more" (καὶ οὐ πλέοσι),\ and on the fact that the poems do not mention hoplite battle tactics, inhumation, or literacy.

Martin Litchfield West has argued that the Iliad echoes the poetry of Hesiod and that it must have been composed around 660–650 BC at the earliest, with the Odyssey up to a generation later. He also interprets passages in the Iliad as showing knowledge of historical events that occurred in the ancient Near East during the middle of the seventh century BC, including the destruction of Babylon by Sennacherib in 689 BC and the Sack of Thebes by Ashurbanipal in 663/4 BC. At the other extreme, a few American scholars such as Gregory Nagy see "Homer" as a continually evolving tradition, which grew much more stable as the tradition progressed, but which did not fully cease to continue changing and evolving until as late as the middle of the second century BC.

"'Homer" is a name of unknown etymological origin, around which many theories were erected in antiquity. One such linkage was to the Greek ὅμηρος (hómēros hostage or surety). The explanations suggested by modern scholars tend to mirror their position on the overall Homeric Question. Nagy interprets it as "he who fits (the song) together". West has advanced both possible Greek and Phoenician etymologies.

Historicity of the Homeric epics and Homeric society

Scholars continue to debate questions such as whether the Trojan War actually took place – and if so when and where – and to what extent the society depicted by Homer is based on his own or one which was, even at the time of the poems' composition, known only as legends. The Homeric epics are largely set in the east and center of the Mediterranean, with some scattered references to Egypt, Ethiopia and other distant lands, in a warlike society that resembles that of the Greek world slightly before the hypothesized date of the poems' composition.

In ancient Greek chronology, the sack of Troy was dated to 1184 BC. By the nineteenth century, there was widespread scholarly skepticism that the Trojan War had ever happened and that Troy had even existed, but in 1873 Heinrich Schliemann announced to the world that he had discovered the ruins of Homer's Troy at Hisarlik in modern Turkey. Some contemporary scholars think the destruction of Troy VIIa c. 1220 BC was the origin of the myth of the Trojan War, others that the poem was inspired by multiple similar sieges that took place over the centuries.

Most scholars now agree that the Homeric poems depict customs and elements of the material world that are derived from different periods of Greek history. For instance, the heroes in the poems use bronze weapons, characteristic of the Bronze Age in which the poems are set, rather than the later Iron Age during which they were composed;  yet the same heroes are cremated (an Iron Age practice) rather than buried (as they were in the Bronze Age). In some parts of the Homeric poems, heroes are described as carrying large shields like those used by warriors during the Mycenaean period, but, in other places, they are instead described carrying the smaller shields that were commonly used during the time when the poems were written in the early Iron Age. In the Iliad 10.260–265, Odysseus is described as wearing a helmet made of boar's tusks. Such helmets were not worn in Homer's time, but were commonly worn by aristocratic warriors between 1600 and 1150 BC.

The decipherment of Linear B in the 1950s by Michael Ventris and continued archaeological investigation has increased modern scholars' understanding of Aegean civilisation, which in many ways resembles the ancient Near East more than the society described by Homer. Some aspects of the Homeric world are simply made up; for instance, the Iliad 22.145–56 describes there being two springs that run near the city of Troy, one that runs steaming hot and the other that runs icy cold. It is here that Hector takes his final stand against Achilles. Archaeologists, however, have uncovered no evidence that springs of this description ever actually existed.

Style and language
The Homeric epics are written in an artificial literary language or 'Kunstsprache' only used in epic hexameter poetry. Homeric Greek shows features of multiple regional Greek dialects and periods, but is fundamentally based on Ionic Greek, in keeping with the tradition that Homer was from Ionia. Linguistic analysis suggests that the Iliad was composed slightly before the Odyssey and that Homeric formulae preserve features older than other parts of the poems.

The poems were composed in unrhymed dactylic hexameter; ancient Greek metre was quantity-based rather than stress-based. Homer frequently uses set phrases such as epithets ('crafty Odysseus', 'rosy-fingered Dawn', 'owl-eyed Athena', etc.), Homeric formulae ('and then answered [him/her], Agamemnon, king of men', 'when the early-born rose-fingered Dawn came to light', 'thus he/she spoke'), simile, type scenes, ring composition and repetition. These habits aid the extemporizing bard, and are characteristic of oral poetry. For instance, the main words of a Homeric sentence are generally placed towards the beginning, whereas literate poets like Virgil or Milton use longer and more complicated syntactical structures. Homer then expands on these ideas in subsequent clauses; this technique is called parataxis.

The so-called 'type scenes' (typische Szenen), were named by Walter Arend in 1933. He noted that Homer often, when describing frequently recurring activities such as eating, praying, fighting and dressing, used blocks of set phrases in sequence that were then elaborated by the poet. The 'Analyst' school had considered these repetitions as un-Homeric, whereas Arend interpreted them philosophically. Parry and Lord noted that these conventions are found in many other cultures.

'Ring composition' or chiastic structure (when a phrase or idea is repeated at both the beginning and end of a story, or a series of such ideas first appears in the order A, B, C ... before being reversed as ... C, B, A) has been observed in the Homeric epics. Opinion differs as to whether these occurrences are a conscious artistic device, a mnemonic aid or a spontaneous feature of human storytelling.

Both of the Homeric poems begin with an invocation to the Muse. In the Iliad, the poet beseeches her to sing of "the anger of Achilles", and in the Odyssey, he asks her to tell of "the man of many ways". A similar opening was later employed by Virgil in his Aeneid.

Textual transmission

The orally transmitted Homeric poems were put into written form at some point between the eighth and sixth centuries BC. Some scholars believe that they were dictated to a scribe by the poet and that our inherited versions of the Iliad and Odyssey were in origin orally dictated texts. Albert Lord noted that the Balkan bards that he was studying revised and expanded their songs in their process of dictating. Some scholars hypothesize that a similar process of revision and expansion occurred when the Homeric poems were first written down.

Other scholars hold that, after the poems were created in the eighth century, they continued to be orally transmitted with considerable revision until they were written down in the sixth century. After textualisation, the poems were each divided into 24 rhapsodes, today referred to as books, and labelled by the letters of the Greek alphabet. Most scholars attribute the book divisions to the Hellenistic scholars of Alexandria, in Egypt. Some trace the divisions back further to the Classical period. Very few credit Homer himself with the divisions.

In antiquity, it was widely held that the Homeric poems were collected and organised in Athens in the late sixth century BC by Pisistratus (died 528/7 BC), in what subsequent scholars have dubbed the "Peisistratean recension". The idea that the Homeric poems were originally transmitted orally and first written down during the reign of Pisistratus is referenced by the first-century BC Roman orator Cicero and is also referenced in a number of other surviving sources, including two ancient Lives of Homer. From around 150 BC, the texts of the Homeric poems found in papyrus fragments exhibit much less variation, and the text seems to have become relatively stable. After the establishment of the Library of Alexandria, Homeric scholars such as Zenodotus of Ephesus, Aristophanes of Byzantium and in particular Aristarchus of Samothrace helped establish a canonical text.

The first printed edition of Homer was produced in 1488 in Milan, Italy by Demetrios Chalkokondyles. Today scholars use medieval manuscripts, papyri and other sources; some argue for a "multi-text" view, rather than seeking a single definitive text. The nineteenth-century edition of Arthur Ludwich mainly follows Aristarchus's work, whereas van Thiel's (1991, 1996) follows the medieval vulgate. Others, such as Martin West (1998–2000) or T. W. Allen, fall somewhere between these two extremes.

Editions

 * Texts in Homeric Greek
 * Demetrius Chalcondyles editio princeps, Florence, 1488
 * the Aldine editions (1504 and 1517)
 * 1st ed. with comments, Micyllus and Camerarius, Basel, 1535, 1541 (improved text), 1551 (incl. the Batrachomyomachia)
 * Th. Ridel, Strasbourg, c. 1572, 1588 and 1592.
 * Wolf (Halle, 1794–1795; Leipzig, 1804 1807)
 * Spitzner (Gotha, 1832–1836)
 * Bekker (Berlin, 1843; Bonn, 1858)
 * La Roche (Odyssey, 1867–1868; Iliad, 1873–1876, both at Leipzig)
 * Ludwich (Odyssey, Leipzig, 1889–1891; Iliad, 2 vols., 1901 and 1907)
 * W. Leaf (Iliad, London, 1886–1888; 2nd ed. 1900–1902)
 * William Walter Merry and James Riddell (Odyssey i–xii., 2nd ed., Oxford, 1886)
 * Monro, D. B. (Odyssey xiii–xxiv. with appendices, Oxford, 1901)
 * Monro, D. B. and Allen, T. W. (Iliad), and Allen (Odyssey, 1908, Oxford).
 * D. B. Monro and T. W. Allen 1917–1920, Homeri Opera (5 volumes: Iliad=3rd edition, Odyssey=2nd edition), Oxford. ISBN 0-19-814528-4
 * H. van Thiel 1991, Homeri Odyssea, Hildesheim. ISBN 3-487-09458-4, 1996, Homeri Ilias, Hildesheim. ISBN 3-487-09459-2
 * P. von der Mühll 1993, Homeri Odyssea, Munich/Leipzig. ISBN 3-598-71432-7
 * M. L. West 1998–2000, Homeri Ilias (2 volumes), Munich/Leipzig. ISBN 3-598-71431-9
 * M. L. West 2017, Homerus Odyssea, Berlin/Boston. ISBN 3-11-042539-4

Interlinear translations

 * The Iliad of Homer a Parsed Interlinear, Handheldclassics.com (2008) Text ISBN 978-1-60725-298-6

English translations
This is a partial list of translations into English of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey.
 * Robert Fitzgerald (1910–1985)
 * The Iliad, Farrar, Straus and Giroux (2004) ISBN 0-374-52905-1
 * The Odyssey, Farrar, Straus and Giroux (1998) ISBN 0-374-52574-9
 * Robert Fagles (1933–2008)
 * The Iliad, Penguin Classics (1998) ISBN 0-14-027536-3
 * The Odyssey, Penguin Classics (1999) ISBN 0-14-026886-3
 * Stanley Lombardo (b. 1943)
 * Iliad, Hackett Publishing Company (1997) ISBN 0-87220-352-2
 * Odyssey, Hackett Publishing Company (2000) ISBN 0-87220-484-7
 * Iliad, (Audiobook) Parmenides (2006) ISBN 1-930972-08-3
 * Odyssey, (Audiobook) Parmenides (2006) ISBN 1-930972-06-7
 * The Essential Homer, (Audiobook) Parmenides (2006) ISBN 1-930972-12-1
 * The Essential Iliad, (Audiobook) Parmenides (2006) ISBN 1-930972-10-5
 * Barry B. Powell (b. 1942)
 * Iliad, Oxford University Press (2013) ISBN 978-0-19-932610-5
 * Odyssey, Oxford University PressI (2014) ISBN 978-0-19-936031-4
 * Homer's Iliad and Odyssey: The Essential Books, Oxford University Press (2014) ISBN 978-0-19-939407-4
 * Samuel Butler (1835–1902)
 * The Iliad, Red and Black Publishers (2008) ISBN 978-1-934941-04-1
 * The Odyssey, Red and Black Publishers (2008) ISBN 978-1-934941-05-8
 * Emily Wilson (b. 1971)
 * The Odyssey, W. W. Norton (2017) ISBN 978-0-393-08905-9
 * The Iliad, W. W. Norton (2023) ISBN 9781324001805

General works on Homer

 * In German, 5th updated and expanded edition, Leipzig, 2005. In Spanish, 2003, ISBN 84-233-3487-2. In modern Greek, 2005, ISBN 960-16-1557-1.
 * In German, 5th updated and expanded edition, Leipzig, 2005. In Spanish, 2003, ISBN 84-233-3487-2. In modern Greek, 2005, ISBN 960-16-1557-1.
 * In German, 5th updated and expanded edition, Leipzig, 2005. In Spanish, 2003, ISBN 84-233-3487-2. In modern Greek, 2005, ISBN 960-16-1557-1.

Influential readings and interpretations

 * (orig. publ. in German, 1946, Bern)
 * Reece, Steve. The Stranger's Welcome: Oral Theory and the Aesthetics of the Homeric Hospitality Scene. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993.
 * Reece, Steve. The Stranger's Welcome: Oral Theory and the Aesthetics of the Homeric Hospitality Scene. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993.
 * Reece, Steve. The Stranger's Welcome: Oral Theory and the Aesthetics of the Homeric Hospitality Scene. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993.
 * Reece, Steve. The Stranger's Welcome: Oral Theory and the Aesthetics of the Homeric Hospitality Scene. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993.
 * Reece, Steve. The Stranger's Welcome: Oral Theory and the Aesthetics of the Homeric Hospitality Scene. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993.
 * Reece, Steve. The Stranger's Welcome: Oral Theory and the Aesthetics of the Homeric Hospitality Scene. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993.
 * Reece, Steve. The Stranger's Welcome: Oral Theory and the Aesthetics of the Homeric Hospitality Scene. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993.

Commentaries

 * Iliad:
 * P.V. Jones (ed.) 2003, Homer's Iliad. A Commentary on Three Translations, London. ISBN 1-85399-657-2
 * G. S. Kirk (gen. ed.) 1985–1993, The Iliad: A Commentary (6 volumes), Cambridge. ISBN 0-521-28171-7
 * J. Latacz (gen. ed.) 2002 Homers Ilias. Gesamtkommentar. Auf der Grundlage der Ausgabe von Ameis-Hentze-Cauer (1868–1913) (6 volumes published so far, of an estimated 15), Munich/Leipzig. ISBN 3-598-74307-6, ISBN 3-598-74304-1
 * N. Postlethwaite (ed.) 2000, Homer's Iliad: A Commentary on the Translation of Richmond Lattimore, Exeter. ISBN 0-85989-684-6
 * M. W. Willcock (ed.) 1976, A Companion to the Iliad, Chicago. ISBN 0-226-89855-5
 * Odyssey:
 * A. Heubeck (gen. ed.) 1990–1993, A Commentary on Homer's Odyssey (3 volumes; orig. publ. 1981–1987 in Italian), Oxford. ISBN 0-19-814747-3, ISBN 0-19-872144-7, ISBN 0-19-814953-0
 * P. Jones (ed.) 1988, Homer's Odyssey: A Commentary based on the English Translation of Richmond Lattimore, Bristol. ISBN 1-85399-038-8
 * I. J. F. de Jong (ed.) 2001, A Narratological Commentary on the Odyssey, Cambridge. ISBN 0-521-46844-2

title: Homer


text:
Hugo Gernsback

Hugo Gernsback (born Hugo Gernsbacher, August 16, 1884 – August 19, 1967) was an American editor and magazine publisher whose publications included the first science fiction magazine, Amazing Stories. His contributions to the genre as publisher were so significant that, along with the novelists Jules Verne and H. G. Wells, he is sometimes called "The Father of Science Fiction". In his honor, annual awards presented at the World Science Fiction Convention are named the "Hugos".

Gernsback emigrated to the U.S. in 1904 and later became a citizen. He was also a significant figure in the electronics and radio industries, even starting a radio station, WRNY, and the world's first magazine about electronics and radio, Modern Electrics. Gernsback died in New York City in 1967.

Personal life
Gernsback was born in 1884 in Luxembourg City, to Berta (Dürlacher), a housewife, and Moritz Gernsbacher, a winemaker. His family was Jewish. Gernsback emigrated to the United States in 1904 and later became a naturalized citizen. He married three times: to Rose Harvey in 1906, Dorothy Kantrowitz in 1921, and Mary Hancher in 1951. In 1925, he founded radio station WRNY, which was broadcast from the 18th floor of the Roosevelt Hotel in New York City. In 1928, WRNY aired some of the first television broadcasts. During the show, audio stopped and each artist waved or bowed onscreen. When audio resumed, they performed. Gernsback is also considered a pioneer in amateur radio.

Before helping to create science fiction, Gernsback was an entrepreneur in the electronics industry, importing radio parts from Europe to the United States and helping to popularize amateur "wireless". In April 1908 he founded Modern Electrics, the world's first magazine about both electronics and radio, called "wireless" at the time. While the cover of the magazine itself states it was a catalog, most historians note that it contained articles, features, and plotlines, qualifying it as a magazine.

Under its auspices, in January 1909, he founded the Wireless Association of America, which had 10,000 members within a year. In 1912, Gernsback said that he estimated 400,000 people in the U.S. were involved in amateur radio. In 1913, he founded a similar magazine, The Electrical Experimenter, which became Science and Invention in 1920. It was in these magazines that he began including scientific fiction stories alongside science journalism, including his novel Ralph 124C 41+, which he ran for 12 months from April 1911 in Modern Electrics.

Hugo Gernsback started the Radio News magazine for amateur radio enthusiasts in 1919.

He died at Roosevelt Hospital (Mount Sinai West as of 2020) in New York City on August 19, 1967, at age 83.

Science fiction

Gernsback provided a forum for the modern genre of science fiction in 1926 by founding the first magazine dedicated to it, Amazing Stories. The inaugural April issue comprised a one-page editorial and reissues of six stories, three less than ten years old and three by Poe, Verne, and Wells. He said he became interested in the concept after reading a translation of the work of Percival Lowell as a child. His idea of a perfect science fiction story was "75 percent literature interwoven with 25 percent science". As an editor, he valued the goal of scientific accuracy in science fiction stories: "Not only did Gernsback establish a panel of experts——all reputable professionals from universities, museums, and institutes—to pass judgment on the accuracy of the science; he also encouraged his writers to elaborate on the scientific details they employed in their stories, comment on the impossibilities in each other's stories, and even offered his readers prize money for identifying scientific errors." He also played an important role in starting science fiction fandom, by organizing the Science Fiction League and by publishing the addresses of people who wrote letters to his magazines. Fans began to organize, and became aware of themselves as a movement, a social force; this was probably decisive for the subsequent history of the genre.

Gernsback created his preferred term for the emerging genre, "scientifiction", in 1916. He is sometimes also credited with coining "science fiction" in 1929 in the preface of the first Science Wonder Stories, although instances of "science-fiction" (mostly, but not always, hyphenated) have been found as far back as 1851, and the preface itself makes no mention of it being a new term.

In 1929, he lost ownership of his first magazines after a bankruptcy lawsuit. There is some debate about whether this process was genuine, manipulation by publisher Bernarr Macfadden, or a Gernsback scheme to begin another company. After losing control of Amazing Stories, Gernsback founded two new science fiction magazines, Science Wonder Stories and Air Wonder Stories. A year later, due to Depression-era financial troubles, the two were merged into Wonder Stories, which Gernsback continued to publish until 1936, when it was sold to Thrilling Publications and renamed Thrilling Wonder Stories. Gernsback returned in 1952–53 with Science-Fiction Plus.

Gernsback was noted for sharp, sometimes shady, business practices, and for paying his writers extremely low fees or not paying them at all. H. P. Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith referred to him as "Hugo the Rat".

Barry Malzberg has said:

"Gernsback's venality and corruption, his sleaziness and his utter disregard for the financial rights of authors, have been well documented and discussed in critical and fan literature. That the founder of genre science fiction who gave his name to the field's most prestigious award and who was the Guest of Honor at the 1952 Worldcon was pretty much a crook (and a contemptuous crook who stiffed his writers but paid himself $100K a year as President of Gernsback Publications) has been clearly established."

Jack Williamson, who had to hire an attorney associated with the American Fiction Guild to force Gernsback to pay him, summed up his importance for the genre:

"At any rate, his main influence in the field was simply to start Amazing and Wonder Stories and get SF out to the public newsstands—and to name the genre he had earlier called 'scientifiction.'"

Fiction
Frederik Pohl said in 1965 that Gernsback's Amazing Stories published "the kind of stories Gernsback himself used to write: a sort of animated catalogue of gadgets". Gernsback's fiction includes the novel Ralph 124C 41+; the title is a pun on the phrase "one to foresee for many" ("one plus"). Even though Ralph 124C 41+ has been described as pioneering many ideas and themes found in later SF work, it has often been neglected due to what most critics deem poor artistic quality. Author Brian Aldiss called the story a "tawdry illiterate tale" and a "sorry concoction", while author and editor Lester del Rey called it "simply dreadful." While most other modern critics have little positive to say about the story's writing, Ralph 124C 41+ is considered by science fiction critic Gary Westfahl as "essential text for all studies of science fiction."

Gernsback's second novel, Baron Münchausen's Scientific Adventures, was serialized in Amazing Stories in 1928.

Gernsback's third (and final) novel, Ultimate World, written c. 1958, was not published until 1971. Lester del Rey described it simply as "a bad book", marked more by routine social commentary than by scientific insight or extrapolation. James Blish, in a caustic review, described the novel as "incompetent, pedantic, graceless, incredible, unpopulated and boring" and concluded that its publication "accomplishes nothing but the placing of a blot on the memory of a justly honored man."

Gernsback combined his fiction and science into Everyday Science and Mechanics magazine, serving as the editor in the 1930s.

Legacy
In 1954, Gernsback was awarded an Officer of Luxembourg's Order of the Oak Crown, an honor equivalent to being knighted. The Hugo Awards or "Hugos" are the annual achievement awards presented at the World Science Fiction Convention, selected in a process that ends with vote by current Convention members. They originated and acquired the "Hugo" nickname during the 1950s and were formally defined as a convention responsibility under the name "Science Fiction Achievement Awards" early in the 1960s. The nickname soon became almost universal and its use legally protected; "Hugo Award(s)" replaced the longer name in all official uses after the 1991 cycle.

In 1960 Gernsback received a special Hugo Award as "The Father of Magazine Science Fiction".

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame inducted him in 1996, its inaugural class of two deceased and two living persons.

Science fiction author Brian W. Aldiss held a contrary view about Gernsback's contributions: "It is easy to argue that Hugo Gernsback ... was one of the worst disasters to hit the science fiction field ... Gernsback himself was utterly without any literary understanding. He created dangerous precedents which many later editors in the field followed."

Gernsback made significant contributions to the growth of early broadcasting, mostly through his efforts as a publisher. He originated the industry of specialized publications for radio with Modern Electrics and Electrical Experimenter. Later on, and more influentially, he published Radio News, which would have the largest readership among radio magazines in radio broadcasting's formative years. He edited Radio News until 1929. For a short time he hired John F. Rider to be editor. Rider was a former engineer working with the US Army Signal Corps and a radio engineer for Alfred H. Grebe, a radio manufacturer. However, Rider would soon leave Gernsback and form his own publishing company, John F. Rider Publisher, New York around 1931.

Gernsback made use of the magazine to promote his interests, including having his radio station's call letters on the cover starting in 1925. WRNY and Radio News were used to cross-promote each other, with programs on his station often used to discuss articles he had published, and articles in the magazine often covering program activities at WRNY. He also advocated for future directions in innovation and regulation of radio. The magazine contained many drawings and diagrams, encouraging radio listeners of the 1920s to experiment themselves to improve the technology. WRNY was often used as a laboratory to see if various radio inventions were worthwhile.

Articles that were published about television were also tested in this manner when the radio station was used to send pictures to experimental television receivers in August 1928. The technology, however, required sending sight and sound one after the other rather than sending both at the same time, as WRNY only broadcast on one channel. Such experiments were expensive, eventually contributing to Gernsback's Experimenter Publishing Company going into bankruptcy in 1929. WRNY was sold to Aviation Radio, who maintained the channel part-time to broadcast aviation weather reports and related feature programs. Along with other stations sharing the same frequency, it was acquired by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and consolidated into that company's WHN in 1934.

Patents and inventions
Gernsback held 80 patents by the time of his death in New York City on August 19, 1967.

His first patent was a new method for manufacturing dry cell batteries, a patent applied for on June 28, 1906, and granted February 5, 1907.

Among his inventions are a combined electric hair brush and comb, 1912; an ear cushion in 1927; and a hydraulic fishery , in 1955.

Gernsback published a work entitled Music for the Deaf in The Electrical Experimenter describing the Physiophone, a device which converted audio into electrical impulses that could be detected by humans. He advocated this device as a method for allowing the deaf to experience music.

Other patents held by Gernsback are related to: Incandescent Lamp, Electrorheostat Regulator, Electro Adjustable Condenser, Detectorium, Relay, Potentiometer, Electrolytic Interrupter, Rotary Variable Condenser, Luminous Electric Mirror, Transmitter, Postal Card, Telephone Headband, Electromagnetic Sounding Device, Submersible Amusement Device, The Isolator, Apparatus for Landing Flying Machines, Tuned Telephone Receiver, Electric Valve, Detector, Acoustic Apparatus, Electrically Operated Fountain, Cord Terminal, Coil Mounting, Radio Horn, Variable Condenser, Switch, Telephone Receiver, Crystal Detector, Process for Mounting Inductances, Depilator, Code Learner's Instrument.

title: Hugo Gernsback