Lk 18:13; TWi hAMARTWLWi

Paul S Dixon dixonps at juno.com
Wed Nov 28 17:34:23 EST 2001



On Wed, 28 Nov 2001 15:49:02 -0600 "Carl W. Conrad"
<cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu> writes:
> At 3:07 PM -0600 11/28/01, Paul S Dixon wrote:

> >Aren't there plenty of examples of appositional nouns in the Koine 
> Greek?
> > If so, then why should we not expect MOI hAMARTWLWi, if he 
> intended to
> >say, "to me, a sinner"?
> >
> >How could he have said it in the Greek, if he wanted to say, "to 
> me, the
> >sinner"?
> 
> No doubt it WOULD be MOI TWi hAMARTWLWi, Paul. But the problem is 
> not with
> the Greek so much as with the English; the Greek uses the article to 
> refer
> to hAMARTWLOS as a class. No doubt you can put it into English as 
> "to me,
> the sinner"--and Steve LoVullo has shown that some versions do just 
> that.
> But the point I thought you were making was that it's wrong to 
> translate it
> WITHOUT using the English definite article, and I think that's 
> interpreting
> the Greek in terms of English grammar.

Carl:

I confess I have reservations about translating a Greek articular
predicate noun without the English definite article.  Is there any
evidence that Greek articular nouns denote anything but definiteness?  If
no, then I question the translation "a sinner" of TWi hAMARTWLWi.

Paul Dixon



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