Name or title?

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Bill Ross
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Name or title?

Post by Bill Ross »

In Hebrews 1:4, ονομα is rendered "name" in all of the English translations that I see which is what BDAG has as well. However context seems to strongly suggest that the ονομα that the author has in mind is "son". What gives?

The same issue is found in Phil 2:9. .

Is the association with a verb or preposition an open and such case for a proper noun? Or is "context king"?

Heb 1:4 τοσουτω κρειττων γενομενος των αγγελων οσω διαφορωτερον παρ αυτους κεκληρονομηκεν ονομα

Php 2:9 διο και ο θεος αυτον υπερυψωσεν και εχαρισατο αυτω Aτο ονομα το υπερ παν ονομα

Thank you.
What I lack in youth I make up for in immaturity.
Wes Wood
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Re: Name or title?

Post by Wes Wood »

Hebrews 1:1-4: Πολυμερῶς καὶ πολυτρόπως πάλαι ὁ θεὸς λαλήσας τοῖς πατράσιν ἐν τοῖς προφήταις ἐπ᾿ ἐσχάτου τῶν ἡμερῶν τούτων ἐλάλησεν ἡμῖν ἐν υἱῷ, ὃν ἔθηκεν κληρονόμον πάντων, δι᾿ οὗ καὶ ἐποίησεν τοὺς αἰῶνας· ὃς ὢν ἀπαύγασμα τῆς δόξης καὶ χαρακτὴρ τῆς ὑποστάσεως αὐτοῦ, φέρων τε τὰ πάντα τῷ ῥήματι τῆς δυνάμεως αὐτοῦ, καθαρισμὸν τῶν ἁμαρτιῶν ποιησάμενος ἐκάθισεν ἐν δεξιᾷ τῆς μεγαλωσύνης ἐν ὑψηλοῖς, τοσούτῳ κρείττων γενόμενος τῶν ἀγγέλων ὅσῳ διαφορώτερον παρ᾿ αὐτοὺς κεκληρονόμηκεν ὄνομα.

Philippians 2:9 διὸ καὶ ὁ θεὸς αὐτὸν ὑπερύψωσεν καὶ ἐχαρίσατο αὐτῷ τὸ ὄνομα τὸ ὑπὲρ πᾶν ὄνομα
(I am not trying to be offensive by reposting the texts. It helps me to have more context.)

I am not sure I understand what you are asking, but it seems to me that your suggested reading moves from the realm of translation into the realm of interpretation. I am not intending to comment one way or the other on whether or not I believe your interpretation is 'the' correct one, but it is worth remembering that translators have the impossible task of bringing out what an author intended to say. As a result they will often leave interpretative decisions somewhat ambiguous so that the reader is aware of other possible understandings. In this case--remembering, of course, that I did not work on translating the version(s) you are reading nor do I claim to be speaking for those translators--I suspect that they felt that the Greek usage was close enough to the English usage that the reader would be able to reach a reasonable conclusion for what the author intended whether the author had a specific idea or several different concepts in mind. To put things differently: I don't think much would be gained by translating "ὄνομα" as "son", but I think much would be lost if this interpretation is incorrect.
Ἀσπάζομαι μὲν καὶ φιλῶ, πείσομαι δὲ μᾶλλον τῷ θεῷ ἢ ὑμῖν.-Ἀπολογία Σωκράτους 29δ
Jonathan Robie
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Re: Name or title?

Post by Jonathan Robie »

I agree with Wes.

You simply won't find a lexicon that says 'son' is one of the meanings of the word ὄνομα, because that's not what it means. You seem to believe that this is the particular name that was meant, but the author did not use the word υἱός, he used the word ὄνομα. We really don't discuss translation here on B-Greek, but clearly any translation that changes ὄνομα into υἱός is more of a paraphrase than a translation, and it closes the door to other ways of interpreting the text, since the reader of that translation would have no reason to suspect other possible meanings.
ἐξίσταντο δὲ πάντες καὶ διηποροῦντο, ἄλλος πρὸς ἄλλον λέγοντες, τί θέλει τοῦτο εἶναι;
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Barry Hofstetter
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Re: Name or title?

Post by Barry Hofstetter »

ὄνομα simply means "name" and thus no translation will render it otherwise. However, both in English and Greek, "name" is a noun which has reference to something else, i.el, a particular name, and so in these contexts. However, that doesn't mean that you translate the word as that something else, any more than you would translate the English word "name" as fils if you were translating the English into French.
N.E. Barry Hofstetter, M.A., Th.M.
Ph.D. Student U of FL
Instructor of Latin
Jack M. Barrack Hebrew Academy
καὶ σὺ τὸ σὸν ποιήσεις κἀγὼ τὸ ἐμόν. ἆρον τὸ σὸν καὶ ὕπαγε.
Tony Pope
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Re: Name or title?

Post by Tony Pope »

From the subject line "Name or title?" I suppose the poster wishes to discuss what sense of the word ὄνομα is intended in the passages mentioned. He or she is not suggesting that Heb 1.4 should be translated as "more excellent son", but wonders whether it should be "more excellent proper name" or "more excellent title".

F F Bruce wrote:
His name which is more excellent than theirs may be inferred from the context to be the tile "Son".
It is perhaps so obvious that the sense is "title" that the original question has been misunderstood.

Why, then, does BDAG not say so? Unfortunately this particular article in the Bauer series of lexicons is perhaps not the only one that is not arranged in the best way from a semantic viewpoint. By contrast, the much maligned lexicon of Thayer has towards the end of its sense 1:

Thayer wrote:
i.q. title : ... κληρονομεῖν ὄνομα, Heb. i. 4; χαρίζεσθαί τινα ὄνομά τι, Phil. ii. 9 ...
Abbott-Smith also notes "as a title" at the end of his sense 1, but Heb. 1.4 is not one of the references that he happens to cite, though he does cite Phil. 2.9.

P.S. Since we are talking about names and titles, how am I to interpret "Ruminator"?
cwconrad
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Re: Name or title?

Post by cwconrad »

Tony Pope wrote:From the subject line "Name or title?" I suppose the poster wishes to discuss what sense of the word ὄνομα is intended in the passages mentioned. He or she is not suggesting that Heb 1.4 should be translated as "more excellent son", but wonders whether it should be "more excellent proper name" or "more excellent title".

F F Bruce wrote:
His name which is more excellent than theirs may be inferred from the context to be the tile "Son".
It is perhaps so obvious that the sense is "title" that the original question has been misunderstood.

Why, then, does BDAG not say so? Unfortunately this particular article in the Bauer series of lexicons is perhaps not the only one that is not arranged in the best way from a semantic viewpoint. By contrast, the much maligned lexicon of Thayer has towards the end of its sense 1:

Thayer wrote:
i.q. title : ... κληρονομεῖν ὄνομα, Heb. i. 4; χαρίζεσθαί τινα ὄνομά τι, Phil. ii. 9 ...
Abbott-Smith also notes "as a title" at the end of his sense 1, but Heb. 1.4 is not one of the references that he happens to cite, though he does cite Phil. 2.9.

P.S. Since we are talking about names and titles, how am I to interpret "Ruminator"?
I will offer a couple ruminations:

"Ruminator" is a browser, probably not a program for accessing and interacting on the web, perhaps a herd animal -- to the extent that he or she is a nameless member of the herd or flock rather than a person with an identity and a face, perhaps one who chews the cud, if only metaphorically, i.e. ponders what has been bitten off but hasn't yet been quite digested and committed to the digestive tract of the mind. I would hope that "Ruminator" will acquire an identity soon; otherwise he or she is not likely to remain among us to pose questions such as this one.

This thread strikes me as nicely illustrating the thread begun by me with some trepidation a couple days ago with the rather pompous title, "The Objective of 'Biblical Greek" Pedagogy". My trepidation was grounded in the realization that it was triggered by my fascination with Stephen Hughes' nit-picking observation, "Attested is not the same as standard." I had no idea that the nit-picking would go on and on as it has, but it appears that there's a methodological antipathy of sorts here between a Platonist sense that one cannot know anything unless and until one knows everything and an Aristotelian sense that unless you delimit a field of inquiry, you'll never come to know anything. I'm not so sure that we can arrive at a fully satisfactory notion of what "standard" Greek diction or usage of a certain era is. Now our attention is called to methodological differences between our lexicographers; my own bugaboo has been the academic linguists who endeavor to illuminate our grasp of ancient Greek but do so from competing theoretical frameworks and can't quite reach a consensus on methodology and terminology. It's a pity that we can't arrive at more consensus over how we understand the process of how we understand "Biblical" Greek or "Hellenistic" Greek or "Ancient" Greek generally.
οὔτοι ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς πάντα θεοὶ θνητοῖς ὑπέδειξαν,
ἀλλὰ χρόνῳ ζητέοντες ἐφευρίσκουσιν ἄμεινον. (Xenophanes, Fragment 16)

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
Bill Ross
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Re: Name or title?

Post by Bill Ross »

Tony Pope correctly interpreted my question to relate to whether ὄνομα can be rendered as "title" over BDAG's proposal that when paired with a verb or preposition it refers to a proper name. Context seems to demand it be rendered "title" but I note that the English translators seem to all go with "name". Ditto for Phil 2:9 where the obedient servant is, as I read it, given the "title" of kurios while the English translations all have the obedient servant being given a "name above every name".

If I understand cwconrad's response then he agrees that the sense is clearly "title" and the entry in BDAG and the plethora of English translations can safely be ignored. If I've misunderstood, please clarify. If not, thank you for the affirmation.
What I lack in youth I make up for in immaturity.
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