the Week of Proper 26 / Ordinary 31
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Bible Encyclopedias
Episode
1911 Encyclopedia Britannica
or an incident occurring in the history of a nation, an institution or an individual, especially with the significance of being an interruption of an ordered course of events, an irrelevance. The word is derived from a word (E7r€evoSos) with a technical meaning in the ancient Greek tragedy. It is defined by Aristotle (Poetics, 12) as µEpos SXov TpaycpSias TO µera v SXcov XopcxwP j€Xcov, all the scenes, that is, which fall between the choric songs. €ZooSos, or entrance, is generally applied to the entrance of the chorus, but the reference may be to that of the actors at the close of the choric songs. In the early Greek tragedy the parts which were spoken by the actors were considered of subsidiary importance to those sung by the chorus, and it is from this aspect that the meaning of the word, as something which breaks off the course of events, is derived (see A. E. Haigh, The Tragic Drama of the Greeks, 1896, at p. 353).
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Chisholm, Hugh, General Editor. Entry for 'Episode'. 1911 Encyclopedia Britanica. https://www.studylight.org/encyclopedias/eng/bri/e/episode.html. 1910.
