[B-Greek] AGAPAW, FILEW, etc. in the GNT

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Thu Feb 16 06:48:39 EST 2006


On Feb 15, 2006, at 7:41 PM, frjsilver at optonline.net wrote:

> Dear Friends --
>
> Since one of my responsibilities in the Church is to work on  
> liturgical translations into English from Greek original texts,  
> this is an important issue for me.
>
> You should know that native speakers of Modern Greek are perfectly  
> well able to distinguish among EROS, STORGH, FILIA, and AGAPH, and  
> that they -- alone among Christians -- still speak the language of  
> the scriptures, albeit in a devolved form.
>
> We must ask ourselves:  If the first generation of Christian Greek  
> writers found it useful to use different words for related  
> concepts, is it useful for us in our generation to assert that the  
> terms are synonomous?
>
> Remembering that the gospels themselves are a canonical Greek  
> representation of words undoubtedly uttered in Aramaic (mostly),  
> the choice of vocabulary several decades after those words were  
> spoken is likely to represent not only strictly semantic and  
> semiotic values,  but also to bequeath a still recent but already  
> inured tradition.
>
> So, in the present instance, eg., Jesus might be asking Peter 'do  
> you love me?' as well as 'are you my friend?'  Given the  
> evangelists' assumption that Jesus had knowledge superior to  
> Peter's, it's entirely possible that Jesus might switch words and  
> Peter might not -- or vice-versa.  We have to deal with the text  
> we've inherited.
>
> And, for that, I think that the text deserves at least as much  
> sensitive differentiation in English as it exhibits in Greek.

But I think this last sentence begs, very precisely, the point. It  
may be as sensitive a differentiation as that between "six" and "half  
a dozen." Or between "do you care for me?" and "do you have warm  
feelings about me?" One might very well want to differentiate in  
translating such a distinction into a target language, but if so, one  
ought to be careful to preserve an effective synonymity of the  
original text.

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad2 at mac.com
WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/




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