[B-Greek] GENNAW
Mike Sangrey
MSangrey at BlueFeltHat.org
Fri May 27 15:11:57 EDT 2005
On Fri, 2005-05-27 at 10:46 -0700, william zeitler wrote:
<snip>
> At the same time Jesus was wont to use words in ways that are unique to Him.
> (ZWH comes to mind). Heck, Nicodemus is getting confused in this very pasage
> because Jesus is using GENNAW in a sense unique to Him.
Yes and no. He did not use words in ways that are perfectly unique to
Him. If I said, "He fredded that one," no one would know what I'm
saying. But I'm probably being pedantic here. Perhaps I'm reacting to
the number of times people have used the argument you're using in order
to support the injecting of their own definition of a word into the
text. I try to be very cautious to not allow myself to do that.
There's a subtle tension between using a word in a new and unique way
and still being able to communicate the intended meaning without a lot
of work redefining the word.
I think it's interesting to this discussion that a word I nearly
suggested for GENNAW in John 3:3 was one that I had to coin for the use.
I nearly suggested, 'reprocreated'. That way I could easily capture
the possible intended ambiguity in the phrase by saying 'reprocreated
from above' and still allow the flow of thought to enable Nicodemus'
misunderstanding.
--
Mike Sangrey
msangrey AT BlueFeltHat.org
Landisburg, Pa.
"The first one last wins."
"A net of highly cohesive details reveals the truth."
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