The translation of the aorist participle POIHSAS in Gal 3: 12

Moon-Ryul Jung moon at saint.soongsil.ac.kr
Tue Dec 5 19:55:25 EST 2000


In recent discussions on Gal 3:12, Carl translated 
hO POIHSAS AUTA in Gal 3:12 as 
the one who gets them performed" to emphasize the completion of the
action involved. To use terms found in the book by
Brooks and Winbery, he takes
the aorist as "culminative aorist". But I would like to take
it as "constative gnomic aorist", because it is a translation of
the Hebrew text:

(Lev 18:5)
BAHEM WAKAI HAADAM OTAM YAASEH ASHER 
in-them then lives-he the-man them does which

(Which if man does he will live in them)
hO POIHSAS AUTA ZHSETAI EN AUTOIS

Here YAASEH (does) is in imperfective. The imperfective situation is
expressed by the aorist participial clause hO POIHSAS AUTA in Gal 3:12.
Since YAASEH OTAM does not emphasize the completion of the action,
its counterpart hO POIHSAS AUTA wouldn't.
So I would think that  translating hO POIHAS AUTA
into "the one who gets them performed" seems reading too much into the
passage.

What do you think, Carl?

Moon

Moon-Ryul Jung
Associate Professor
Dept of Digital Media
Sogang Univ, Seoul, Korea 















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