follow up
Mr. Lemuel G. Abarte
lemuel at bcd.weblinq.com
Tue Jul 7 21:37:41 EDT 1998
How about the adverb ANWQEN in John 3:3? If Jesus and Nicodemus conversed in Aramaic, "again" might be the proper translation since Jesus would have likely used 'vd - a numerical substantive. The response of Nicodemus concerning a second birth makes sense. The subsequent explanation of Jesus would have clarified the meaning of the adverb with the equivalent EK from a Hebrew original - perhaps mn?
If Jesus used m'l, Nicodemus would have been dumbfounded. "Being born from above", is seemingly foreign to Jewish thinking since only angels are the bny h'lhym.
-----Original Message-----
From: Jack Kilmon [SMTP:jkilmon at historian.net]
Sent: Monday, July 06, 1998 1:30 PM
To: Biblical Greek
Cc: Biblical Greek
Subject: Re: follow up
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
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