[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






More information about the B-Greek mailing list