Romans 15.18-19
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Tue Jul 13 06:47:35 EDT 1999
At 10:17 AM +0000 7/13/99, Mark Goodacre wrote:
>Rom 15.18-19:
>
>OU GAR TOLMHSW TI LALEIN hWN OU KATEIRGASATO
>XRISTOS DI EMOU EIS hUPAKOHN EQNWN, LOGWi KAI ERGWi,
>EN DUNAMEI SHMEIWN KAI TERATWN, EN DUNAMEI
>PNEUMATOS [QEOU].
>
>NIV, RSV and NASB all translate with something like this: "I will not venture
>to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me in
>leading the Gentiles to obey God by what I have said and done . . ." I am
>interested in this "except" clause. Surely the most natural reading is
>not "I will
>not dare . . . except" but rather "I will not dare to speak of those
>things which
>Christ has not done through me . . ." Is there any justification for the
>standard
>translation?
Mark, I think this MAY be more a question, as you put it, of what is more
"natural" in English. While I'll agree that "I will not dare to speak of
those things which Christ has not done through me" is LITERALLY ACCURATE, I
DON'T think it is natural English. Rather I think this is an instance of
rhetorical litotes--the rhetorical double negative--that doesn't carry over
naturally into literal English expression; I think this is in the same
category as the Latin NON NULLI, NON ... NISI expressions. I do think that
the MORE NATURAL English expression for what Paul is saying here would be,
"I shall speak ONLY of what Christ has accomplished through me ..."
I guess your question amounts to whether hWN OU is equivalent to EI MH hWN;
for my part, I think that it is.
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University
Summer: 1647 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/
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