[B-Greek] Question about Matthew 11:14
Jim West
jwest at highland.net
Wed Dec 14 13:19:29 EST 2005
Octavio Rodriguez wrote:
> Dear Sir:
>
> My interest is about this sentence : Matthew 11:14 : hAUTOS ESTIN HLIAS.
>
> Elias is a definite noun. This is the proper name of an ancient famous
> prophet. However, regarding the semantic of this passage,
> i think that this proper name in this sentence can be a prototype. The real
> meaning of this is "John is what Elias was".
According to Zwingli, "estin" can = "signify". This is probably an
accurate rendering in some contexts but I'm not so sure it works here.
A more straightforward rendering might be "and if you wish to accept it,
he is Elijah, the one who is to come" or "... he is "Elijah-like ..."
which I think communicates the idea of the phrase pretty well.
>
> Therefore, we can translate it as "This(John) is similar to Elias".
>
> I don�t know if in any other place this clause (A ESTIN B ) could be
> regarded in the same sense like Matthew 11:14.
> In other words : Which are the examples in which "A estin B" or "A B
> estin" is equivalent to "what A is/was, B is/was " ?.
As I hinted above, Zwingli uses "estin" in the sense of "signifies" in
connection with the Lord's Supper- i.e., "this signifies my body" which
of course caused Luther all kinds of problems. But that's another tale
for another day.
Best
Jim
--
D. Jim West
Biblical Studies Resources - http://web.infoave.net/~jwest
Biblical Theology Weblog - http://biblical-studies.blogspot.com
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