Negation

Moon-Ryul Jung moon at saint.soongsil.ac.kr
Mon Feb 12 23:03:42 EST 2001


>  My current problem is with the New World Translation at Philippians 2:6
> 
>  hOS EN MORFHi QEOU hUPARCWN OUC hARPAGMON hHGHSATO TO EINAI ISA QEWi
> 
>  This is discussed a lot in 'Greek Grammar Beyond The Basics', but I
> don't think it says anything about 'OUC hARPAGMON hHGHSATO' being
> translated as 'gave no consideration to a seizure'. I thought OU/MH
> negates what immediately follows it and to be translated this way it
> would have to say 'OUC hHGHSATO hARPAGMON' or 'hARPAGMON OUC hHGHSATO',
> how exactly does negation work and is this a possible translation?
> 
>  
The issue is how to parse the sentence. We have two options:

(1) hOS EN MORFHi QEOU hUPARCWN [OUC hARPAGMON] hHGHSATO TO EINAI ISA
QEWi.
  Being in the form of God, he considered it not a robbery (or
                   something to be taken by force) to be equal to God.
(2) hOS EN MORFHi QEOU hUPARCWN [ OUC [ hARPAGMON hHGHSATO TO EINAI ISA
QEWi] ]
 Being in the form of God, he did not considered it a robbery to be equal
to
 God. 

To me, both convey the same information in this case. (2) seems to be a
more
natural way to parse the sentence. 

Moon
Moon-Ryul Jung
Sogang Univ, Seoul, Korea 



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