[B-Greek] Prepositional Phrase [How Did Greeks Think?]
Oun Kwon
kwono at upstate.edu
Thu Oct 9 00:33:37 EDT 2003
Hi Doug,
When I read what you wrote, I did fully agree with you feeling. All these
disjointed word orders!. (Sorry here I am almost totally ignorant of
Greek). So I picked up an interlinear translation (The Kingdom Interlinear
Translaton of Greek Scriptures with NWT translation on the right column).
This book 1969 is a very compact one with excellent Greek font; it provided
me very useful service now for almost 30 years.
As I read the text Rev 13:8, if I put that literal one copied here for the
e-mail reader's convenience:
And will-worship him
all the-(ones) dwelling upon the earth,
of-whom not has-been-written the name of-him
in the little-book of-the life of-the-lamb
the-(ones) having-been-slaughtered
from throwing-down of-world
NWT:
And all those who dwell on the earth will worship it; the name of not one of
them stands written in the scroll of life of the Lamb who has been
slaughtered, from the founding of the world.
In NWT there is a typo (the word 'been' was dropped). Here NWT (not in the
interlinear one) put a comma, before the last phrase you mentioned, "from
the founding' of the world" to help the readers separate it and to connect
this to the verb "been written".
As I read the interlinear (to get flavor of the orginal Greek), it would not
be difficult to follow the flow if add the comma separation. I would not
know whether it will hold the same, case if I read it ALOUD or have it read
aloud to me. I assume one as to insert a breath pause here to disconnect it
from the preceding phrase " ..... slaughtered".
Now, the question is, how would a Greek person read this? Since there is
not one alive speaking Koine Greek, I am thinking about who speaks in modern
Greek. I will ask one in my hospital to ask about this on a next occasion I
see him.
Note: I have already sent in a question to him regarding Heb 11:11
(extensive e-mail exchange on this one lately in the Bible Translation Group
at Bible-Translation at kastan). The issue was about who was subject of the
verbs and the phrase, Sarah or Abraham; two different positions taken up in
the translations. I firmly believe this verse tell's about faith of Sarah
as one of the Hall of Faith. Some takes a compete opposite saying the only
thing abouth Sarah here is a phrase 'though Sarah is barren'.)
Be that it may, I like to give you one example from my native Korean. In
a sentence, the verb takes its position at the end of a sentence! Say, "I
went to the church yesterday to see my pastor" would be roughly like
"yesterday my-pastor to-see to-church went". In Korean "I" as the
subject of a verb is not used unless it is emphasized. This reminds me
Latin "credo" (I believe) and just like the Gk 'EGO' which appears when
there is emphasis as in John 1:26 John the baptizer saying "EGW BAPTIZO EN
hUDATI" (I myself baptize in water).
On top of it, if I want to negate, the word corresponding to 'not' comes
just in front of this verb! So it would be more confusing, if you think of
a longer narration with negation in it. Amazingly there is actually no
confusion at all for us.
How would be a problem in German with the split verbs? For some verbs, the
word does split and its front (? prepositional) part comes at the end of the
sentence; the portion of the verb remaining in the ordinary place do not
give any hint about the meaning of the whole verb!. This occurs only under
certain conditions. As an rough way of showing: Say, 'I understand the
word.' would become with the verb split 'I stand the word under." The
'stand' would not give any hint of orignal meaning of 'understand'.
Shalom
Oun J Kwon, M.D.
SUNY Uptate Med University
Syracuse, NY
>>> Mark Lama <markosl80 at yahoo.com> 10/07/03 5:09 PM >>>
Doug Hoxworth <dhoxworth at charter.net> wrote:
but this brings up another question that i've been
wondering for some time and even more now that i'm trying
to learn to actually "read" Greek rather than merely
analyze it. i understand that the word order is relatively
free but my additional question is how did they actually
think or put the thought together as they read. having
english as my native tongue when i try and read Greek it
seems rather disjointed in thought as if the writer just
keeps adding thoughts. i mean since they read from left to
right then the sentence has to make sense as one reads it
now just as we analyze it, parse it, diagram it, translate
it, etc.
perhaps this is just my complete ignorance as to foreign
language but i'm trying to get my arms around this idea of
how they put ideas and thoughts together. i really don't
know exactly what i'm asking...it really seems rather
amorphous. but in Rev 13:8 in particular, how would the
reader know when coming to the final prepositional phrase
that it was supposed to modify the verb which came way
before it (i.e., it is quite distant from it)?
[Mark]
This has been an interesting thread. The only thing that I would add to
Ranulf's, in my view, excellent reply is that even in reading one doesn't
strictly perceive a sentence "from left to right" but much more as a whole.
Likewise, in speech, one does not understand one word at a time, but, to an
extent, whole utterances. Not being trained in psycholinguistics, I am
really not equipped to shed any light on how English speakers think, let
alone how ancient Greek speakers thought, but from personal experience I
know that as one reads more and more Greek the painful word-by-word,
left-to-right sensation diminishes, and one begins spontaneously to grasp
whole thoughts. At some point of familiarity, the text begins to "open up",
and one begins to see whole word-blocks together, as one does while reading
one's native language. It is an experiance of "peripheral vision" that comes
as one no longer has to pause over every word and form. The key is to begin
learning how to think in Gr
eek by
eliminating the "translation step" and internalizing the meaning directly
from the source-language. It would be well if NT Greek learning programs
more commonly had this as a central goal. There are tecniques on both the
teaching and learning side that can be used to make this easier. Maybe
someday some of the modern research on language learning will trickle down
to the classical languages.
CARIS KAI EIRHNH,
Mark Lama
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