[B-Greek] 2 Thes 2,4

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Wed Jun 23 17:17:06 EDT 2004


At 4:02 PM -0400 6/23/04, Oun Kwon wrote:
>Carl,
>
>You mentioned the text may be translated both way:
>
>
>>> Yes, and there's an element of consequence or result here,
>>> so that you can translate the construction into English as:
>
>>>    " ... so that he takes his seat in the temple of God and
>>>                    (thereby)  shows that he is God ..."
>>>    or  " ... so that he takes his seat in the temple of god,
>>>                      thereby showing that he is God ..."
>
>I belive the first one is accurate and correct.

Both are accurate representations of the sense of the Greek; there's no
semantic difference between the two formulations in translation.

Why we cannot take the
>Greek text 'literally' with attention to presence or absence of the article
>(the temple of the God ...  he is (a) god)?

The text is ... APODEIKNUNTA hEAUTON hOTI ESTIN QEOS.

You could, theoretically, convey it as "that he is a god"--but the context
makes it clear enough that the writer is not thinking in polytheistic terms.
-- 

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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