[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







More information about the B-Greek mailing list