[B-Greek] Why Monotonic Greek. Was: Free Polytonic Uncial Greek Unicode Font?

Curtis Hinson curtis at curtishinson.com
Thu Aug 10 01:53:36 EDT 2006


I appreciate your willingness to engage and discuss, Eric.  As to 
monotonic: I use the word, as I understand it, in the same way it's used 
in Greece.  Meaning, without the set of diacriticals with the exception 
of the tonos, although sometimes even the tonos is omitted.  For 
instance, the monotonic NT on my website does not even use the tonos.

As to John 1.17, the text.
1:17 οτι ο νομος δια μωυσεως εδοθη η χαρις και η αληθεια δια ιησου 
χριστου εγενετο
        OTI O NOMOS DIA MOUSEWS EDOQH H CARIS KAI H ALHQEIA DIA IHSOU 
CRISTOU EGENETO.

A quick translation of mine:
"Because the Torah through Moses was given, grace and truth through 
Jesus Christ came to be."

It occurs to me just now that the function of DIA is questionable, if 
anybody wants to talk about other ways that could function we should 
probably branch off a new thread on that subject.  What's the function 
of OTI, and what connection might be drawn between EDOQH and EGENETO?

"Because the Torah was given for the sake of Moses, grace and truth for 
the sake of Jesus Christ came about."

It also occurs to me to wonder if the articles can be functioning here 
in a demonstrative way, which would be interesting:
"Because the Torah through Moses was given, this grace and this truth 
through Jesus Christ came to be."
That one makes it look like Jesus is a fulfillment of the Torah, which 
seems reasonable enough theologically.

Also I note that the 2004 Metaglottisis modern Greek agrees with my 
understanding here of OTI in that it renders it GIATI, "because".

Alright, most translations I see seem to do something basically like 
what Tyndale does here:
John 1:17  For the lawe was geven by Moses but grace and truthe came by 
Iesus Christ.

I'd take issue, on a side note, with translating NOMOS as "law" or 
"Law", because that English is not in my opinion an honest reflection of 
what TORAH means, and NOMOS is used in that LXX technical sense of TORAH 
here I will say.  Where it gets really interesting here is that having 
thumbed through a bunch of different critical texts, none of them I saw 
so far show the spiritus lenis on the H on CARIS.

It may be then I have not chosen the best example for the principle I'm 
illustrating here, but it looks to me like the vast majority of 
translations I've looked at are reading the eta in front of CARIS as 
spiritus lenis, then reading the eta on ALHQEIA as spiritus asper!  The 
most logical reading of these I would say is to read them both as 
articles, because otherwise one has to wonder why one is anarthrous and 
with a disjunctive, even though CARIS and ALHQEIA are connected by 
conjunctive KAI.  To get the understanding of most translations, this 
most improbable stunt needs to be performed somehow. 

So this particular example more easily makes the translators rather than 
the editors look like the ones using diacriticals to twist the text.  
But, at the least, it illustrates how diacriticals can be used 
dishonestly to slip under the radar screen, either in a critical edition 
or in a translation based on an eclectic text.  And in this case, to 
justify a strange reading of a text, maybe with some replacement 
theology in mind.

What sets my translation apart is that I'm challenging the disjunctive 
idea that most translations go with.  It makes more sense, to me at 
least, to see NT writers giving Jesus the legitimacy of Torah 
fulfillment as opposed to making him a heretical Torah-replacer. I hope 
my intended point gets through here.

Bless the Name
Curtis Hinson
http://curtishinson.com

Eric Weiss wrote the following on 8/9/2006 7:20 PM:
> Can you explain what you mean here? I.e., does monotonic 
> Greek mean "without the accents and breathing marks"?
>
> And - which word of John 1:17 is significantly affected 
> by the rough breathing on the eta? How do you read/translate 
> it without the aspiration?
>
> Thanks!
>
> Eric S. Weiss
>
>
>  		
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