[B-Greek] Matthew's use of hEWS

Iver Larsen iver at larsen.dk
Tue May 24 00:58:41 EDT 2005


>
> Allow me to clarify my question-I am not looking to speak doctrine in this
> question-I am seeing that our translation of "until" in hEWS is inadequate
> as hEWS is more dynamic than this.
>
> Thanks.
>
> Dan
...
> Can anybody comment on Matthew's use of hEWS, specifically in
> 1:25 and 5:26.
> These two verses, and the interpretation of hEWS (until) has been used in
> the church to come up with some pretty big doctrines - 1:25 (semper virgo)
> and 5:26 (purgatory).  The interesting thing is that these doctrines are
> usually met by taking hEWS "until" in two different ways.
>
> Any insight would be appreciated.
>
> In Christ,
>
> Dan

One can never build a doctrine on a single word, especially not a
preposition or conjunction.

However, I believe you are correct that the English word "until" is an
inadequate and often misleading translation of hEWS.
The problem is that English "until" includes expectations about what happens
afterwards, and such expectations are not included in hEWS (or the
corresponding word in Hebrew).  (They can in some cases be inferred from
context.) The meaning of hEWS is "up to a certain point in time or space."
If I say "I stayed inside until it stopped raining", the implication of
"until" in English (not necessarily in Greek) is that I went out after it
stopped raining.
If I say "I did not leave until she came back", the implication in English
is that when she did come, I left.
Unfortunately, there is no word in English that corresponds to hEWS, so to
get a more accurate translation, one has to do a complete restructuring of
the sentence, and such translations were until recently considered "bad" and
"inaccurate" whereas the opposite is actually the case. It is often the
literal versions that misrepresent the intended meaning of the original.
For the sentences above, one might restructure in order to have less strong
implication about what happened afterwards:
I stayed inside while it rained.
I stayed there all the time she was away.

Often the English "while" would be a better translation of hEWS, but one
still needs considerable restructuring.

I'll send you off-list a research paper I did some time ago concerning this.

Iver Larsen
Bible translation consultant




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