‘καí can sometimes mean ‘and’’ : a note on the meaning of καí in Mark 1.15c

Abstract

Someone told me that once a tutor of Greek in one of the Colleges of Oxford University allegedly told his students: ‘καὶ can sometimes mean ‘and’’. Whether this is an anecdote or simply something that the tutor in question could very well have uttered (in a true-to-life scenario) is not the issue here. The point is that in Greek (as is well known, but for some reason in practice not sufficiently underscored) the particle καí has many more meanings than just that of ‘and’. I would like to tackle this issue with special reference to Mark 1.15c, and I dedicate this brief article (simply by way of an animadversio) to my friend and colleague Horatio Caesar Roger Vella, whose attention to detail in matters of the Classical languages needs no introduction.