[B-Greek] Jn 21.13 & 21.15 How much do you love me?

Curtis Hinson curtis at curtishinson.com
Sun Dec 17 22:02:40 EST 2006


I suppose this will be my only post on this thought as it's heading 
outward from our list topics.  But I think a potential issue here is 
that particularly with people of literate Western heritage there's a 
longstanding tradition of putting pressure on the text to render 
definitive answers to theological, even cosmological questions.  It's a 
modernistic view of canon.

To be fair most of the texts were not designed -- were not written -- 
with this function in mind.  I tend to think there are areas that are 
ambiguous because sometimes the author has something different in mind 
than what later exegetes would have preferred.  Sometimes having a more 
natural competency in Greek might merely allow room for ambiguity rather 
than trying to analyze it or "autopsy" it to death.  A bit of lit crit 
is probably a healthy input.

I'm being a bit quieter lately because I think my angst was showing.  
:-)  It's good to take a break sometimes.

Bless the Name
Curtis Hinson
http://curtishinson.com
http://adfontes.ath.cx

Wayne Leman wrote the following on 12/17/2006 12:56 AM:
> I am of the camp that believes that if we understood Greek better, close to 
> the competence of its native speakers, there would be far fewer ambiguities 
> than we find in the text today. Human communication does not work well with 
> too high a number of ambiguities. Many ambiguities in the biblical text are 
> there because of our analysis and not authorial intent. So, I encourage 
> people to study the context of each passage better, study the theme of a 
> passage, study the flow of the logic, attempt to determine what the author's 
> overall point was that he was trying to communicate. In many, many cases 
> what we think are ambiguities can disappear, and simply be considered as 
> relics of the analytical process not taking everything into consideration 
> that the original author and his audience had to work with as assumptions.
>
> There are a few intentional ambiguities in the biblical texts. I think any 
> other real ambiguities are far less than often suggested. Study, study, 
> study! Especially study passages in their total context.
>
> Wayne
> ----
> Wayne Leman
> Better Bibles Blog:
> http://englishbibles.blogspot.com
>
>   
>> If a text is ambiguous in the  original, let's keep it
>> that way in translation.  Dynamic equivalence theory
>> translators  often go overboard to make explicit what
>> is implicit in the original, and often drift into the
>> field of interpretation.  In this passage, the
>> antecedent of TOUTWN in v 15  is for interpreters to
>> decide rather than  grammarians.  Anyway, that's how I
>> see it.
>>     
>
> ---
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>   

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