[B-Greek] NWT: Is it an accurate translation of the Greek?
Awohili at aol.com
Awohili at aol.com
Thu Feb 23 15:29:54 EST 2006
In a message dated 02/23/2006 12:09:25 P.M. Pacific Standard Time,
nebarry at verizon.net writes:
I researched this some time ago, and contacted a coptic scholar (I can
supply
the reference off-list, if anybody likes). He simply said that in contexts
such
as this, the Coptic indefinite article is required, but does not necessarily
imply what the English indefinite article implies, so that the Coptic
indefinite
does not have the same semantic range as the English, any more than the
English
definite article has the same range as the Greek. He mentioned that he felt
the
standard English translations of John 1:1 would be a fine rendering of the
Coptic version...................(snipped)...............
Greetings, Barry -- the Barry I had in mind when I mis-addressed Harold.
It doesn't really matter, since scholars have theological presuppositions as
well. Still, again we are dealing with the "does not necessarily"s, which
belabor the fact that the Coptic indefinite article can be legitimately and
accurately translated into English as an indefinite article, and usually is.
Also, as noted in my previous post, John 1:1c in Coptic and John 18:40 in
Coptic have the same grammatical construction. And no one would quibble
about John 18:40 being translated as "Barabbas was a robber." Whereas the Coptic
indefinite article can be used qualitatively in some cases, it also
functions quite well as a simple indefinite article.
Granted, long tradition works against rendering John 1:1c as "the Word was a
god/God," but is this a matter of grammatical accuracy or of theology? When
the topic question was "Is it an accurate translation of the Greek," my
assumption was that grammatical accuracy was being investigated.
Best regards,
Solomon Landers
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