[B-Greek] Genitive in 2 Cor 1:5
Carl W. Conrad
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Thu Jun 3 22:44:26 EDT 2004
At 1:33 PM -0700 6/3/04, Eddie Mishoe wrote:
>Dr. Conrad:
>
>
>> While I think that each of these may be more fully
>> characterized in terms
>> of translation strategies, I personally think it
>> would be better NOT to
>> suppose that our translation strategies for dealing
>> with genitive phrases
>> must reflect some clear semantic distinction
>> intended by the original
>> speaker or writer.
>> --
>
>One last question, if I may...
>
>Are you implying then that the fundamental semantic
>categories a native Koine Greek reader/hearer would
>have understood basically "fall under" your 3 main
>categories (adnominal, partitive, ablative)? And from
>these 3 main categories, a particular context might
>bring out a slight nuance?
Not exactly; Koine Greek depends much more upon prepositions in combination
with grammatical case-forms whereas earlier Greek much more commonly used
the genitive case-forms by themselves to convey the distinctions I've
noted. Nevertheless I confess that I am bewildered by the acrobatics
engaged in by interpreters who want to see more in AGAPH TOU QEOU than in
English "love of God" or in PISTIS IHSOU CRISTOU than in English
"faith(fulness) of Jesus Christ." Sometimes the context may help to clarify
whether in a particular instance the writer is concerned more with love
directed toward God or with God's love for humanity, but I honestly think
it is silly to suppose that a Greek speaker or writer had any notion of a
distinction between a subjective and an objective genitive any more than if
we speak of "car care" we give any thought to how "car" functions in
relationship to "care" in that phrase.
>As you have pointed out in the past, I often confuse
>what a Greek expression might legitimately mean with
>how it can be translated. I have always worked under
>the assumption that the objective of a translation ---
>mine at least --- is to bring out the semantic nuances
>of the native language expression (Greek). I'm
>wondering if what your real concern is is with the
>nuances that grammarians are trying to categorize
>rather than the larger semantic categories under which
>these nuances would fall?
I'm saying that understanding as fully as possible what a Greek text is
saying and how it is saying it is fundamentally different from, although
not wholly unrelated to, expressing that content of the Greek text in
question in intelligible and idiomatic English. I think much of what passes
for grammatical analysis of Greek is exercises in translation strategies
based on the assumption that once a Greek text has been converted to a
formulation in a target language, the Greek text in question has been
adequately understood. That is by no means necessarily true and may in fact
be altogether untrue. Obviously the Greek reader or hearer didn't need to
convert that text into a target language in order to understand it.
Understanding a Greek text and expressing the content of that Greek text in
a different language are different skills and ought not to be confused.
--
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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