Translation Help Needed
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Fri Dec 27 15:51:28 EST 2002
At 12:56 PM -0500 12/27/02, Spencer Gee wrote:
>I need some help with the following sentence in a Koine Greek texbook.
>
>LEGEI OUN PROFHTHS EKEINOS hON DIDASKEI IHSOUS:
>PISTEUW.
>
>The first part-Is it "That one is a prophet and he says" or is it "That
>prophet says"?
PROFHTHS EKEINOS is the subject of LEGEI, so it's "So that prophet says ..."
>The second part-
>is it "Whom jesus teaches I believe"? or is it "Jesus teaches whom I
>believe"? Does jesus teach the people I already believe or does he teach
>people and then I believe them? (or I could be completely wrong)
Here hON is a relative pronoun in the accusative, the object of DIDASKEI,
the subject of DIDASKEI being the nominative IHSOUS. The relative clause is
"whom Jesus is teaching ..." The hON refers back to PROFHTHS EKEINOS, so
that we now can read this far: "That prophet, the one whom Jesus is
teaching, says ..."
>I'm not sure why 'Pi' in the last word is capitalized. It looks like the
>first part of the sentence leads to a quotation but the lesson on
>quotations does not come until the next chapter. To sum up; I'm just a
>very confused person. Thanks for any help you might be able to offer.
In your printed text PISTEUW was spelled with an upper-case Pi in order to
indicate that it is indeed a new unit of discourse; in this instance, I
think it was meant by the composer of this sentence to be what "that
prophet" actually says, namely, "I believe." The whole: "So that prophet,
the one whom Jesus is teaching, says 'I believe.'"
--
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu OR cwconrad at ioa.com
WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/
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