follow up

Jack Kilmon jkilmon at historian.net
Mon Jul 6 01:29:58 EDT 1998




CRAIG R HARMON wrote:

> >scholars that take NT exegesis a step further by transposing
> >the Semitic linguistic and cultural context behind the Greek often
> >come closer to the ipsa verba than those Graecists who
> >tendentiously cling to Greek exegesis alone.
> >Jack
> >jkilmon at historian.net
>
> That's an interesting statement. How do you know that they come closer to
> the ipsissima verba? It rather assumes that anyone knows what those are
> (unless, as I'm sure you're not) you mean the Greek text (which, let's face
> it, is all we have). Anything else is conjecture pure and simple. IMO.

I do not agree. The LXX is not compositional Greek.  It is 100%
translational Greek.  The NT is a combination of compositional Greek
with imbedments of translational Greek.  The translational Greek retains,
in many cases, Semitic structures but often loses the Semitic idiom.
As a result, there are textual variants throughout the witnesses and
these variants often distill to one word when retroverted back to
Aramaic (NT) or compared to the MT. (LXX).  To ignore this is to do only
half a job in exegesis.

Jack
jkilmon at historian.net




More information about the B-Greek mailing list