Acts 5:32

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Fri Jun 14 13:01:02 EDT 2002


At 12:14 PM -0400 6/14/02, Frazier Conley wrote:
>Embarassing. Let me try again. "Gave" is the aorist. God gave the Holy
>Spirit to someone. To those who "obey" him, a present participle. My
>understanding is that the present participle is governed the tense of the
>main verb. Is this incorrect? If it is, I wonder why the translators of
>the Simple English Bible rendered it the way they did?

The text is: Acts 5:32 KAI hHMEIS ESMEN MARTURES TWN hRHMATWN TOUTWN KAI TO
PNEUMA TO hAGION EDWKEN hO QEOS TOIS PEIQARCOUSIN AUTWi.

This is purely speculative, as I don't know the first thing about the
translators of the Simple English Bible. Perhaps(?) they were translating
that present participle in terms of a simplistic notion of how a present
participle coordinates with an aorist indicative in the clause upon which
it depends. In fact, however, the Greek for "God has given the Spirit to
those who obeyed him" really ought more properly, I think, to have been TO
PNEUMA TO hAGION EDWKEN hO QEOS TOIS PEIQARXASIN AUTWi.
-- 

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
Most months:: 1647 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu OR cwconrad at ioa.com
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/



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