[B-Greek] re my wooden interlinear translations

Mike Sangrey MSangrey at BlueFeltHat.org
Sat Nov 5 07:57:49 EST 2005


On Fri, 2005-11-04 at 20:49 -0600, Dan Gleason wrote:
<snip>
> In another week or so I will be asking more questions but in a style that 
> shouldn't offend anybody.
> At that point, hopefully, we can all start off from square 1 again.

For the record:

I'm not at all offended by the style of the English you present in your
"translations".  I'm just concerned that you quite misunderstand the
original text since the English you use doesn't convey what the original
says.  You're injecting meaning into what the original text intended.

You had mentioned that you see "hidden meanings all the time" in the
Greek text.  While it is certainly true that the authors--any clever
author, for that matter--utilize turns of phrase and puns, and so on, it
is not true that the text is full of hidden meanings.  John, for
example, is quite inventive in his way of communicating, even funny (in
a belly laugh sense), but the intention was to communicate.  Humor, and
even entertainment, is a pleasant and effective way of communicating.
Mark is excited about communicating (and I wish Bible translations
conveyed that better, but as that would be expressed in English; they
homogenize the Bible too much, IMO).  If, however, you assume hidden
meanings are there, you will find them.  Lots of them.  But one is able
to do that with the daily newspaper, too.

I think one of the difficulties you're bumping up against is that you
want the translation to convey only one rather narrow dimension of the
meaning.  And language doesn't forgive anyone who wants it to work that
way.  You say, "The most literal wooden translation following Mark's
word order brings out the visual puns and imagery."  That's sort of,
kind of, true.  And, in one sense, that will be fine.  BUT!, that will
only be fine if when you read the literal wooden translation you read it
ONLY thinking along the line of visual puns and imagery.  If you slip
into a higher level of cognition, or even a different level, the
translated text will convey meaning that will rather likely not be
there.  This is the danger.  And that dangerous step is enormously easy
to do since language and cognition simply function along many dimensions
simultaneously.  You can fight that all you want; but you won't win.

The only way to really win is to become fluent in koine Greek.  For that
to happen, one BAPTIZESQAI in it to cleanse away the error.

-- 
Mike Sangrey                               (msangrey AT BlueFeltHat.org)
Exegetitor.blogspot.com
Landisburg, Pa.
                        "The first one last wins."
            "A net of highly cohesive details reveals the truth."




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