[B-Greek] First Corinthians 14:18

Eric Weiss eweiss at gte.net
Wed Sep 24 13:35:01 EDT 2003


> The Greek text must mean (a) "speak more in tongues than you all" 
> rather than (b) "speak in more tongues than you all". This is 
> confirmed by ALL English translations. None of them say (b), but 
> all say (a) in some form or another. Whether one wants to keep 
> the word "tongues" or try to explain by saying "a 
> language/languages unknown to the speaker" is a translation 
> question. 
> 
> Iver Larsen

I read somewhere that someone proposed translating like:

"I thank God more than all of you [do] that I speak in tongues."

But no one translates it that way, as far as I know. Is it possible, though, to translate it that way?

(Also ... as one whose church experience has largely been in Charismatic churches, I agree that the term "ecstatic speech" conveys to the modern ear something that is a mischaracterization of what modern-day "speaking in tongues" tends to consist of, as very few of the practitioners are in a state of "ecstasy" or of less than full control of their senses and organs of speech, nor or they spiritually transported "out of" that in which they "stand." 

Whether or not what the Corinthians and the people in Acts were doing was "ecstatic speech" or was the same thing modern-day tongues-speakers do is beyond our ability to know. But even if what is done today is NOT the same as what was done 2,000 years ago, I still think it is misleading, based on what we do know, to translate GLWSSAIS or GLWSSHi LALWN in I Cor., et al, as "speaking in ecstatic speech.")

Eric S. Weiss
eweiss at gte.net
http://home1.gte.net/vzn05pnm/index.htm




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