adverbial use of prepositional phrase in Luke 23:43?
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Sun Sep 29 14:30:44 EDT 2002
At 3:51 PM +0300 9/29/02, Iver Larsen wrote:
>>
>> Yes, as Carl indicated in his response, MET' EMOU is in a more
>> prominent position than EN TWi PARADEISWi. This would indicate that
>> being with Jesus is the more prominent idea than being in paradise,
>> although being in paradise is nothing to shake a stick at. Being with
>> the person is more important than being in the place, as great as the
>> place is. As far as serving to indicate something like antecedent
>> condition, this, I think, is more a theological conclusion than
>> syntactical.
>>
>> As far as preceding the verb or following, that does not change the
>> meaning of the prepositional phrase, just its relative prominence in
>> the clause.
>>
>> I'm guessing the reason English translations do not follow the order of
>> the original is that it makes for unnatural English. It seems to me we
>> would be more apt to say, "Today you will be with me in paradise," than
>> "Today with me you will be in paradise."
>>
>> As a side note, there is something similar in 1 Th 4.17 (PANTOTE SUN
>> KURIWi ESOMETHA, "always with the Lord we will be"), although with only
>> one prepositional phrase. There we have adverb-prepositional phrase of
>> association-future verb of being. The prepositional phrase indicating
>> association is fronted here as in Luke 23.43. Could Jesus' words
>> recorded in Luke 23.43 lie behind Paul's (and the early Church's)
>> thoughts here?
>
>May I intersperse a spin-off here?
>The concept of prominence in different languages and how it relates to
>translation is an intriguing one.
>It seems to me that English is pretty much the OPPOSITE of Greek when it
>comes to word order and prominence. Of course, English is far less flexible
>than Greek in word order changes, but when changes are possible, it is my
>impression that the later positions are more prominent in English. You
>native speakers of English have a better feeling for this than I have, so
>you can correct me if I am wrong.
>
>The Greek word order in Luke 23:43 is:
>Today with me you will be in (the) paradise.
>
>I think the prominence is best captured in English by saying:
>You will be in paradise with me today!
>
>Similarly in 1 Th 4:17:
>We will be with the Lord always/for ever!
>
>As someone who works with idiomatic translations of the Bible, the
>consequence of this is very interesting. It seems that the closer an English
>bible translation follows the Greek word order, the further it is from
>faithfully rendering the originally intended prominence.
As an English-speaker and writer, I wouldn't want to affirm that as a
generally valid principle; I think there are different factors at work in
different sentences.
I'd also note that there are some, perhaps many (myself included), who
think that SHMERON in Lk 23:43 belongs with AMHN SOI LEGW. Of course, this
does indeed run counter to Iver's assertion that there is no final-position
emphasis in Greek word-order, but that's one of the points on which we
continue to disagree.
--
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
Most months: Most months: 1989 (was 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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