[B-Greek] LXX Exodus 20:16

Harold R. Holmyard III hholmyard at ont.com
Fri Apr 23 20:24:53 EDT 2004


Dear Shawn,

>LXX Exodus 20:16
>
>OU YEUDOMARTURHSEIS KATA TOU PLHSION SOU MARTURIAN YEUDH.
>
>This is typically rendered as "you shall not bear false testimony 
>against your neighbor."  The MARTURIAN YEUDH at the end of the verse 
>seems either redundant or out of place to me as OU YEUDOMARTURHSEIS 
>means "you shall/will not bear false testimony."
>
>Does the inclusion of the MARTURIAN YEUDH add or change something in 
>the meaning?
>
>In translating this verse, I translated it as "You will/shall not 
>falsely testify false testimony against your neighbor."  Does this 
>translation capture the *full* translation or am I off somewhere.
>
>Any help or insight into this would be appreciated.  Thank you.


HH: I was going to say that the Greek probably reflected redundancy 
in the Hebrew, but it does not. However, the translator was most 
probably a Jew who knew Hebrew. In Hebrew such redundancy is common 
and is called a cognate accusative. The verb and its object stem from 
the same root. So a literal translation of a clause might be: You 
shall not lie lies. That's the way Hebrew is regularly, even though 
it does not happen to be that way at Exod  20:16. The LXX sometimes 
uses Greek that matches Hebrew style and syntax, so maybe the 
translator did that here.

						Yours,
						Harold Holmyard




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