[B-Greek] PARAKLHTOS

Bryant J. Williams III bjwvmw at com-pair.net
Thu Jun 8 22:20:48 EDT 2006


Dear Iver,

I am curious, why is the word "Paraclete" not used? It does have the advantage
that Paraclete does advocate, comfort, instruct, teach, counsel, mentor,
intercede on one's behalf, legal Friend , etc. In fact, if I remember correctly,
both Plummer (I John, Notes: pages 33-34) and Morris (John, Additional Note F:
The Paraclete, pp. 662-) make the comment that the use of PARAKLHTOS was used
for all the mentioned above. The aspect of an advocate is lying beneath the
surface (F.F. Bruce, John, p. 307, fn 10 gives references favoring "advocate"
showing that PARAKLHTOS is a Hebrew/Aramaic loanword for "peraclit" and shows
that the Holy Spirit as the PARAKLHTOS is a defender of the believer, but is the
prosecuting attorney against the unbeliever, p. 318), but PARACLETE encompasses
all these roles and then some. The word itself is unquestionably passive with
meaning "called to the side of," but as a substantive it has the idea of the
Latin "advocatus" (Morris, p. 663). Morris does indicate in footnote 92 that is
rare in this use. Interestingly, we have the Holy Spirit and Jesus are
interceding on our behalf before the Judge of all the universe.

At the same time, we find in John and I John that Jesus and the Holy Spirit
perform the same roles (why else is the Holy Spirit called " 'another' (of the
same kind) PARAKLHTOS?"). Some would argue that transliterating the Greek term
would not be correct, but I would counter that we do that with "BAPTIZW." (Let's
not go there, please).

En Xristwi,

Rev. Bryant J. Williams III
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Iver Larsen" <iver at larsen.dk>
To: "Fridolin Janzen" <fjanzen at gmx.net>; "BG" <b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Thursday, June 08, 2006 03:35 AM
Subject: Re: [B-Greek] PARAKLHTOS


>
> >I am working on a Portuguese New Testament translation and looked for a long
> > time for the ideal word for PARAKLHTOS. We have the transliteration
> > "paracleto" in Portuguese.  I could use a footnote and explain the term, but
> > preferred to use the word "mentor". I seems to covers all possibilities for
> > PARAKLHTOS. A mentor encourages, counsels, instructs, guides, defends, etc.
>
> I have been working on a modern, communicative translation into Danish. We
have the same problem. It is not easy to find
> a good word for PARAKLHTOS.
>
> The traditional Danish translation is "talsmand" which means "spokesman". But
in the language of today it is used
> narrowly for political spokesmen or a spokesman for a group or workers in
relation to the management. So we rejected it.
>
> We ended up with "advisor" which is very similar to mentor. I didn't think
about using "mentor", but it may be
> possible. The main problem I have is that it implies someone who has been
doing a particular job for a long time, has
> lots of experience and is now "handing over" to those he mentors. For those
reasons, I prefer the more general
> "advisor". My daughter has an MA supervisor, but in Danish he is not called a
supervisor, but an advisor (vejleder). An
> advisor (in Danish at least) is expected to encourage, instruct, guide,
counsel and even defend.
>
> I am not sure whether the best word in English or Portuguese is "advisor", but
it seems to work fairly well in Danish.
> (We put a footnote giving alternative renderings.) In the case of 1 John 2:1,
we are using a word that talks about
> intercession rather than advisor, which is used in the four instances in
John's Gospel.
>
> Iver Larsen
> Translation consultant
>
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