[B-Greek] articles on PEIRASMOS
Iver
iver_larsen at sil.org
Thu Aug 21 07:03:44 EDT 2003
Hi, Dmitriy
You said:
> I am confused. If the word PEIRAZW has never had such meaning as
> "temptation"...
This is the disputed claim, and a claim that the lexicons do not support as
Jonathan has shown. I won't answer Jeffrey's arguments since they appear to
be based on a particular theology (e.g. that the Devil is not hostile to the
purposes of God), and they also seem to ignore the NT context.
But let me try to keep to the meaning of the word and explain a bit about
semantics and translation.
> If we are not always able to understand what the passage says, should we
> attribute new meanings to words? If for ancient people to
> PEIRAZEIN meant to test, how would they understand NT authors, if
> they had suddenly started using words in new meanings?
> And test is test, whatever purpose it may have. The purpose
> doesn't change the meaning of the word. When you say, "his intent
> and hope was surely that Jesus would fail, and therefore it was
> not only a test, but a temptation.", you admit, that it was a
> test. Of course, for that test satan used temptation, but it has
> nothing to do with the word PEIRAZW itself.
<snip>
> Should a
> translation necessarily reflect purpose of the test? I don't think so.
> You agree that it was test, and that word is good enough for translation.
> Sincerely,
> Dmitriy Reznik
No, it is not good enough for translation, and the vast majority of Bible
translators have used "tempt" in certain contexts.
It seems that you consider the meaning of a word to be a constant unit apart
from use in context. That is not how language works. A word may have a basic
meaning, but various nuances or aspects come to the fore in various
contexts. I am happy to accept that the basic meaning of PEIRAZW corresponds
roughly to the English "test". However, a word has an area of meaning which
is often explained by the use of several different glosses. Whichever gloss
fits best depends on the context. The semantic area of meaning of the
English "test" does not overlap completely with PEIRAZW. Rarely, if ever, do
such areas of meaning for any word overlap from one language to another, so
part of the difficulty is that we try to explain the meaning of a Greek word
by several English glosses.
My claim is that the standard lexicons are correct and that one sense of
PEIRAZW is with evil intent, used in certain contexts and determined by
those contexts. This sense does indeed correspond to the modern English
"tempt". A proper translation will therefore choose that word in those
contexts where this sense is seen to be intended, but we can only deduce
this by looking at what is the intent and who is the agent. By the way, the
same applies to translation into several other languages apart from English.
We have the same in Danish, and all translations into Danish use two
different words to translate PEIRAZW, depending on context, and it does not
solve the issue to appeal to a possible historical change in the meaning of
English "tempt". If a language uses the same word for both senses - as Greek
does - there is no problem in translation.
Iver Larsen
Bible translation consultant
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