HEOS; Matt 10:23

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Thu Nov 14 11:25:53 EST 2002


At 6:15 AM -0800 11/14/02, Steve Black wrote:
>  Matt 10:23 When they persecute you in one town, flee to the next;
>for truly I tell you, you will not have gone through all the towns of
>Israel **before** the Son of Man comes.
>
>The word translated "before" is heos. I am wondering how it is that
>every translator translates this as "before" - which (my Greek is at
>a comfortable "beginner's" level) by my understanding never elsewhere
>is thusly translated, is is not found as a lexical possibility in any
>of my resources. It seems to me that perhaps a previous assumption as
>to what this passage means is responsible for not translating this
>"until" or "till".  I would translate this text something like...
>
>When they persecute you in one town, flee to the next; for truly I
>tell you, you will not have gone through all the towns of Israel
>*until* the Son of Man comes.
>
>This shifts the meaning - making it less clear perhaps and more
>ambigious. Perhaps the meaning might be something like that the job
>won't be completed - perhaps emphasizing more the size of the job at
>hand than the nearness of the "end". (Regardless - the meaning should
>be constructed from a good translation and not the other way around)
>
>My question is, am I missing some fancy "advanced" grammatical rule
>here that would allow for heos to be translated as "before"?

Text (it helps to have this before us): ... AMHN GAR LEGW hUMIN, OU MH
TELESHTE TAS POLEIS TOU ISRAHL hEWS AN ELQHi hO hUIOS TOU ANQRWPOU.

I think that the fulfilment of the apodosis (OU MH TELESHTE) depends upon
the (prior) completion of the coming of the SoM as indicated by aor. subj.
+ AN--so that, if you want to translate hEWS AN ELQHi with "until," you'd
need to make it "until the Son of Man HAS COME." It's not that the coming
is contemporaneous with the completion of the circuit of the POLEIS of
Israel but rather the coming of the SoM will PRECEDE completion of the
circuit of the POLEIS. So is there any difference in meaning between "until
the Son of Man has come" and "before the Son of Man has come"? I think the
usual version expresses the sense quite properly, because English idiom
doesn't normally use a future perfect in this sort of clause.
-- 

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.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/



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