[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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