[B-Greek] IOUDAIOS and metonymy
Dmitriy Reznik
reznik1 at juno.com
Sun Feb 1 00:11:55 EST 2004
Thanks Harold. I couldn't myself better explain Iver my position than you
did it. I just want to add a couple of words.
On Sat, 31 Jan 2004 13:40:22 -0600 "Harold R. Holmyard III"
<hholmyard at ont.com> writes:
>
> >Is being anti-Judean any better than anti-Jewish? Both sound like
> racist
> >tendencies to me, and both are misunderstandings of John's
> terminology as
> >commonly mistranslated in literal English versions.
>
> HH: There is no need to bring in a concept of anti-Judean. Jesus'
> life was
> threatened by the Judean authorities.
>
Iver, I can give an example. If I am an American during the Cold War, I
could say "Moscow" meaning the Communist government. In the same way I
could say "Russians" meaning Soviet authorities. Both would work. But
imagine me being a Russian dissident somewhere in Siberia. I still could
easily say "Moscow" meaning the evil government, but I would hardly use
the word "Russians" being Russian myself. In our discussion you speak
like that American who calls bad guys from Kremlin "Russians". No, you
are not a racist, but you being foreign for Russia can easily call all
bad Communists Russians. But for a Russian dissident such word usage
would be insulting. You cannot identify yourself with a Russian
noncommunist, otherwise you would not call bad guys simply Russians. You
cannot feel what a Jew John at that time felt, otherwise you would
understand how strange it is for him to call Jewish (or Judean)
authorities simply Jews (thus excluding himself from the Jews). Maybe it
is easier for me to understand him because I am a Jew myself (don't try
to attribute biases to me only because of that). According to your view,
the slogan "Jews crucified Jesus" is just right. Or can you imagine e.g.
Abraham Lincoln calling Southerners simply Americans? Would your
knowledge of metonymy help you? Please pay attention at this point: the
problem is not that it is impossible for somebody to call bad guys
"Jews", but that it is improbable for a Jew like John to call bad guys
"Jews".
Anyway, I already told you that I agreed that IOUDAIOS can mean
authorities, but the word itself doesn't mean "authorities", it should be
translated either as Jew or Judean, and "authorities" can be added in a
footnote if necessary. Can we translate "Russian threat" as "threat of
Moscow" or even as "Kremlin threat"? It might be a good commentary but
not a good translation. It would be a paraphrase.
Sincerely,
Dmitriy Reznik
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