[B-Greek] Two men in one bed?
CWestf5155 at aol.com
CWestf5155 at aol.com
Fri Jul 21 12:34:03 EDT 2006
Greetings Iver.
Actually, as this is generic/gnomic, it could include the possibility of two
women as far as the grammar is concerned. It would be inclusive of all
possible combinations of people, given the use of the masculine as the default
gender. I agree with your gloss of "people", or in English we could just leave
it at "two".
If it were a description of an actual occurrence, then we would rule out two
women or a man and a woman.
Cindy Westfall
Assistant Professor
McMaster Divinity College
In a message dated 7/21/2006 8:16:27 AM Mountain Standard Time,
iver at larsen.dk writes:
> Since in Luke 17:35, Luke uses the feminine in order to describe two women
> grinding together, "MIA" and "HETERA", wouldn't that mean that he
> purposefully uses the masculine in verse 34 in order to describe two men?
No, I don't think it is possible to make such a deduction. The two people
grinding flour together would obviously have
to be women, so the feminine is used. But two people in the same bed could
be either two men or a man and a wife (not
two women).
> The words ANAKLINW, KATAKLINW derive from KLINE, and the illustrations I
> have from the time, show that they "always" reclined at the table for the
> meals. They did not "sit" at the table the way we do today. They did not
use
> chairs, they used the "KLINE", so two men could have been taking a meal at
> the "KLINE" at the event described, just like Jesus and His disciples were
> reclined during the Last Supper.
There are many examples in the NT of people reclining to eat. But if you
check the context of all of these, the
expressions used and the contexts are very different from here. I am not
aware that they reclined on a KLINH for a meal.
At least there are no examples of this in the NT. They were probably
reclining on pillows, and the food would be served
on the table.
> In Portuguese we have feminine and masculine articles in order to
differentiate between the two,
> just like in German, which is not the case in English. Luther
differentiates, using the
> masculine in verse 34 and the feminine in verse 35.
Now that you mention the German versions, I looked up two of them. Die
Lutherbibel is literal and as ambiguous as the
Greek, since it says that "zwei auf einem Bette liegen". I assume that zwei
Menschen is meant, so that the following
"der eine" refers to Mensch. Mensch is masculine like ANQRWPOS, so there is
a good linguistic match.
The Gute Nachricht has chosen to use "Von zwei Männern, die in jener Nacht
auf einem Bett schlafen".
By using "Männern" (men) they have IMO made an unfortunate mistake.
Iver Larsen
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