[B-Greek] Re: Rom 8:11 (EGEIRANTOS)

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Wed Apr 14 16:28:08 EDT 2004


At 12:04 PM -0700 4/14/04, Raymond Custer wrote:
>    Romans 8:11 has the participle "egeiranyos" twice being translated
>"him who raised".  The dictionaries I checked seem to not include "him
>who".  Could someone help me understand why we add these two words?
>thanks;  leon custer

You are apparently a new list-member, Raymond. May I suggest that you go to
our list's home page and read carefully through our FAQ at:
	http://www.ibiblio.org/bgreek/faq.txt
You'll note there that we ask participants to sign their messages with a
full-name signature--even if the name appears clearly in the "From" header;
you'll also see a clear exposition of our transliteration scheme, in
accordance with which the word you're asking about is transliterated
EGEIRANTOS.

Now to the substance of your question: I don't think you'll find "him who"
as such in an English dictionary. The text in question in Rom 8:11 is EI DE
TO PNEUMA TOU EGEIRANTOS TON IHSOUN EK NEKRWN OIKEI EN hUMIN, hO EGEIRAS
CRISTON EK NEKRWN ZWiOPOIHSEI KAI TA QNHTA SWMATA hUMWN DIA TOU ENOIKOUNTOS
AUTOU PNEUMATOS EN hUMIN. I see EGEIRANTOS, the genitive singular of the
aorist active participle, only once there--the nominative EGEIRAS appears
later, and then there's the genitive singular of the present active
participle ENOIKOUNTOS. I suppose that the particular instance you're
concerned with is TO PNEUMA TOU EGEIRANTOS TON IHSOUN EK NEKRWN; this
phrase is Englished most literally as "the spirit of THE ONE HAVING RAISED
Jesus from (the) dead ..."--but better English is "the spirit of THE ONE
WHO raised Jesus from the dead ..." Somewhat more archaic English gives
that as "the spirit of HIM WHO raised ..." I really don't think anyone who
write "the spirit of HE WHO raised ..."

In sum, the issue is how best to convey in English or another target
language a substantive participle--in this instance TOU EGEIRANTOS; one of
the most common translation strategies is to convert it into a relative
clause ("the one who xxx").
-- 

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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