Paul's Gender
Mike Sangrey
msangrey at BlueFeltHat.org
Wed Jul 31 16:58:57 EDT 2002
On Wed, 2002-07-31 at 12:22, Donovan W. Hannis wrote:
> Howdy.
>
> This discussion on gender in language has again raised
> a question in my mind that seems to surface frequently
> while I am reading this list. Do we know how well Paul
> spoke and wrote Greek? I presume Greek was not Paul's
> first language, and even if it were, we know it was not
> his only language.
Just to add another observation into the mix:
The other day I read an article on the TNIV which pointed out there are
times when Paul quoted (or almost quoted) the OT where the OT has a
singular pronoun and Paul genericizes (is that a word?) it in the NT by
making it plural. One could perhaps argue Paul was being inaccurate for
doing that; however, ISTM he had to be pretty adept at the different
languages involved in order to pull that off with any amount of
authority. In his audience (especially considering that the letters
were eventually circulated) were Bereans of various types. And, like
defending a dissertation with a AK-47, if the experts in the language
had questions about how Paul botched the language, Paul had better been
loaded, ready and taking an accurate aim.
I apologize for not being able to recall the name of the article; it is
on the web, however. It might be Craig Bloomberg's article accessible
from Wayne Leman's site:
http://www.geocities.com/bible_translation/tnivlinks.htm
--
Mike Sangrey
msangrey at BlueFeltHat.org
Landisburg, Pa.
"The first one last wins."
"A net of highly cohesive details reveals the truth."
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