[B-Greek] GENNAW

william zeitler william at faithfulbible.com
Sat May 28 06:19:14 EDT 2005


Thank you for your thoughtful reply. See comments below...

best wishes,

willim zeitler

---------------

On Friday 27 May 2005 11:37 pm, Iver Larsen wrote:
>
> As far as I can see you are trying to understand the Greek text on the
> basis of English rather than the Greek.

Not really, but I have to use English to talk about it. (Although in an 
earlier post I did suggest -- tongue firmly planted in cheek -- that we 
conduct this forum in Koine Greek!)

>
> There is a word TIKTW that specifically refers to the event of a birth in
> both a literal and extended sense. GENNAW is broader and includes both
> conception and birth. This word in itself does not allow the distinction
> that you seem to be looking for. 

Not really looking for a distinction per se. I'm looking to see if there's 
some reason from the Greek & Text itself why only the narrower 'born' is the 
common/traditional understanding, or if that's just habit/tradition on our 
part.

> The normal way in the NT to speak of a 
> child being born is by using a passive form of GENNAW. Of the 44
> occurrences of passive GENNAW in the NT, the interlinear I was checking
> glossed it with "born" 43 out of 44 times. Only one was narrowed down by
> context to refer specifically to conception. 

I also looked at all the contexts in the NT. (And more.) My take was that when 
a female is in the context, 'born' makes more sensible English, male in the 
context, 'begot'. But that's because of English, NOT the Greek.

> Now, some of these instances 
> are ambiguous, especially when used in the negative. If you say "It was
> better that person had never been born" you could have said "it was better
> that person had never been conceived". But GENNAW does not make that
> distinction. 

Precisely!

> Other words would have to be used to separate those two 
> concepts. The passive of TIKTW is only used two times, when the focus is on
> the actual birth event. (Matt 2:2 and Luke 2.11)
>
> In John 3, I am not saying that GENNAW means "be born" (like ETECQH) to the
> *exclusion* of being conceived. If a child is born, the child first must
> have been conceived. In John 3 we have the added complication that Jesus is
> talking about spiritual birth (including spiritual conception). Nicodemus'
> misconception has little to do with the meaning of GENNAW (or the
> corresponding Hebrew/Aramaic word) , 

Haven't looked at the Aramaic yet. (That would be on a different forum 
anyway!)

> and all to do with the difference 
> between *physical* conception+birth (which may be the meaning intended by
> TIS GENNHQHi EX hUDATOS)  and *spiritual* conception+birth (TIS GENNHQHi EK
> PNEUMATOS). That difference is the focus of Jesus' explanation when he
> contrasts being born (produced) of flesh/humans with being born (produced)
> of spirit/Spirit.

>
> In English, the broader term is "born" rather than "conceived" 

I'm not sure I agree. 'Born' to me focuses on the female role. English 
dictionaries second that opinion. But I'm not interested in how best to 
TRANSLATE it, just whether the semantic domain of the Greek includes the 
'male mode' also in John 3 in particular. At this point I'm satisfied that it 
does.

> and that is 
> why "born" is the better rendering in John 3, although not perfect. I
> accept that the English word has more focus on the birth event than the
> Greek word. You can usually not find an exact word match in another
> language, so in real translation work as opposed to "Greek class
> translation" one has to focus on the main theme as well as clarity and
> naturalness. Another important aspect in choosing words in a translation is
> the question of which words lend themselves better to an extended sense.
>

Yes! Languages and their cultures do not correspond one-to-one!

So if we're going to talk about translation in particular, in view of Jesus 
constantly characterizing our relationship with God as 'Father/child' (and 
never 'Mother/child') I wonder if 'begotten from above' might actually be 
more consistent (in English) with this constant theme in His teaching. 

I'm not interested in being doctrinaire about this as I can't think of any 
doctrines affected, but as I read through John 3 and expand my imagination to 
include 'beget' and not just 'born', if I may borrow a term from billiards: 
it puts a different English on the English! <grin!>

> Iver Larsen
> SIL Translation consultant



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