[B-Greek] 1 Thess 3:11

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Thu Oct 30 15:49:56 EST 2003


At 7:18 PM +0000 10/30/03, Noel Fitzpatrick wrote:
>Recently AUTOS and Granville Sharp have been discussed.
>
>However I am interested in the translation of 1 Thess 3:11 AUTOS DE
>hO QEOS KAI PATHR hHMWN.  Essentially there are two ways to
>translate this (1) "God himself and our father" and (2) "our God and
>father himself".
>
>I have checked some translations and 7 give (1) and 12 give (2), while
>the  New Jerusalem Bible  gives "God our father himself".

I think that NJB's version is identical in meaning with (2), and I think
that (2) is correct.

Why? I think that AUTOS and hHMWN both govern the phrase hO QEOS KAI PATHR;
if one seriously wanted to distinguish PATHR as not included in the phrase
governed by the article, then I think we'd have to understand it as "God
himself and A father of us"

>I would tend to favo(u)r (1), keeping phrases on either side of KAI
>together.

Don't you rather mean keeping the phrases on either side of KAI apart? Do
you really understand the phrase to refer to "God himself" and "our father"
as referring to two distinct units?

>Is there any objective way to decide on a preferred translation?

Well, I guess that "our God and a father of us" is syntactically possible
in theory, but I don't see how anyone could take that possibility seriously
in the context of the remainder of the sentence; it would certainly appear
that Paul expresses the wish (with a rare true optative!) that God and
Jesus should guide Paul's course to the Thessalonians. Granted that
KATEUQUNAI is singular, yet I think this is an instance of the add-on
subject: AUTOS DE hO QEOS KAI PATHR hHMWN KAI hO KURIOS hHMWN IHSOUS
KATEUQUNAI THN hODON hHMWN PROS hUMAS--"May our God and father himself as
well as our Lord Jesus direct our (= my) course towards you." Surely we
don't have a new-fangled trinity here of (1) "God himself," (2) "a father
of us," and (3) "our Lord Jesus."

I suspect that those versions offering your version (1) above understood
the phrase hO QEOS KAI PATHR hHMWN as a unit but translated as they did in
order to preserve the word-order of the Greek; the newer translations
accord better with modern English usage, I think.
-- 

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/



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