[B-Greek] Romans 16:7
Jim West
jwest at highland.net
Tue Dec 21 12:03:56 EST 2004
At 11:46 AM 12/21/2004, you wrote:
>There is another issue here that I would be interested in hearing folks'
>opinions on. Namely, how do we interpret the phrase "hOITINES EISIN
>EPISHMOI EN TOIS APOSTOLOIS"? There's significant diversity in how this
>is translated among translations across ideological lines.
I agree that the discussion falls along ideology.
>For example:
>
>ESV - "They are well known *TO* the apostles,* and they were in Christ
>before me."
BDF discuss "en" in secs. 218-220. There is nothing in that discussion
that persuades me that "to" is a proper use of the preposition in the case
under discussion.
>NRSV - "they are prominent *AMONG* the apostles, and they were in Christ
>before I was." [Emphasis mine in both cases.]
>
>It seems that the majority of translations are sticking to translating EN
>as "among", but that newer conservative translations are choosing to
>translate it as "to". Personally, I think that this is a far more
>significant question that the gender of IOUNIAN.
>
>FWIW, I tend to favor the NRSV's translation because it seems to me to
>fall much more in the usual sense of "EN" than the ESV's. However, I
>would be very interested in hearing comment from others on this list.
The ESV (and its kindreds) simply idiosyncratically translates the
preposition- in harmony with its ideological presupposition. Ideology is
often more informative in the work of translators than linguistics. And
this verse is a classic example of that.
Best,
Jim
++++++++++++++++++++
Jim West, ThD
Adjunct Professor of Biblical Studies
Quartz Hill School of Theology
http://web.infoave.net/~jwest Biblical Studies Resources
http://biblical-studies.blogspot.com Biblical Theology Weblog
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