Phil. 2:10 KAMYH=should bow or will bow?

Randall M. Tidmore rmt at elp.rr.com
Thu May 17 21:28:47 EDT 2001


Harry,

I think the difficulty you are having, is a very common one for English
speakers: what do we do with a "genuine subjunctive." I know that in English
we have what we call subjunctive, but it not a form of its own, therefore we
have to use "should," or "might," etc. This is not the same as genuine
subjunctives in other languages. While I am such a "little greeker," I am
limiting this to languages in general. I struggled with this tremendously
while trying to learn Spanish on the mission field. I didn't have anything
to really compare the subjunctive to in English. If I have failed to express
this point sufficiently, others on the list who are much more qualified
hopefully will explain this idea better.

Another text you might consider is 1 Corinthians 11:26b:

AXRI hOU ELQHi (I hope I managed to transliterate that correctly.)

In English usually this is translated, "...until He comes." We would not
expect a subjunctive here in English, but in the Greek (and Spanish) it is.
In Spanish it is required by the word for "until."

I hope this helps.

Randall (Randy) Tidmore


-----Original Message-----
From: Clwinbery at aol.com [mailto:Clwinbery at aol.com]
Sent: Thursday, May 17, 2001 5:46 PM
To: Biblical Greek
Subject: [b-greek] Re: Phil. 2:10 KAMYH=should bow or will bow?

In a message dated 5/17/01 3:15:21 PM, hjbluebird at aol.com writes:

>I really appreciate you help in this. But it wouldn't be grammatically
>correct to translate KAMYH as "will bow" would it? That's why I
>cann't understand why my NASB would do that. It's suppose to be a
>literal translation, isn't it?. I feel some what betrayed.
>
The aorist subjunctive is part of a hINA clause,  hINA EN TWi ONOMATI IHSOU
PAN GONU KAMYHi. . .

by nature all subjunctives are potential and thus future. There are a number
of places in the GNT when the future indicative is used inter-changeably
with
the subjunctives in hINA clauses. To translate the aorist subj. as future
here is, IMHO, is very close to what Paul was thinking. He considered that,
if this were God's purpose, it surely would come to pass.

Carlton Winbery
LA College

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