Rev 18:20

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Sat Jun 19 18:02:56 EDT 1999


At 6:55 AM -0700 6/19/99, George Blaisdell wrote:
>>From: "Carl W. Conrad"
>
>>Moon-Ryul Jung wrote:
>
>> >Linda asked:
>
>
>> >The question is about the translation of the "because clause":
>> >hOTI EKRINEN hO QEOS TO KRIMA hUMWN EX AUTHS.
>> >Literally it says:
>> >God judged your judgement from her.
>> >
>> >Some translated it as
>> >God judged your judgement against her.
>> >It seems to make sense.
>> >So, here we have two questions.
>> >(1) Can EX mean AGAINST?
>> >(2) What does "KRINW TO KRIMA hUMWN" mean?
>
>
>>(1) No, EK in this instance must mean (oddly) "with reference to", an
>>extraordinary extension of "arising from",
>
>>hOTI EKRINEN hO QEOS TO KRIMA hUMWN EX AUTHS  'because God condemned her
>>for
>>what she did to you' Re 18:20.
>>
>>Note that this translation is of the "dynamic equivalence" sort: it is good
>>English but there's no way to see in it what Greek text it is derived from
>>without having gone through the entire >analysis of the two phrases in
>>question (KRINEIN TO KRIMA hUMWN and EX AUTHS).
>
>I am wondering if this may be a formulaic expression of a legal decision, in
>virtue of the two genitives following TO KRIMA.  In US courts the judge
>might say "I find FOR the plaintiff AGAINST [EX] the defendant. This would
>have hUMWN EX AUTHS as a unit [of decision, both for and against] modifying
>TO KRIMA.
>
>So here: hOTI EKRINEN hO QEOS TO KRIMA hUMWN EX AUTHS would translate
>"[rejoice] that God decided the judgement [in favor] of you against [away
>from] her."

If you're really serious about this hypothesis, George, it wouldn't hurt to
check it in a lexicon and find out whether there's such an idiom in Greek
usage of the first century. Normally, however, I wouldn't attempt to draw
inferences back to Greek usage from 20th century American English usage--or
I suppose this more likely goes back to British judicial English.


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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