[B-Greek] The two hOTAN clauses in 1 Cor 15.24

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Sat Oct 21 11:07:00 EDT 2006


On Oct 21, 2006, at 10:39 AM, moon at sogang.ac.kr wrote:

> On Oct 21, 2006, at 7:24 AM, moon at sogang.ac.kr wrote:
>
> [Moon]
>> Let me ask a question about the relationsip betwee the two hOTAN
>> clauses in
>> 1 Cor 15:24:
>>
>> (1) EITA TO TELOS,
>> (2) hOTAN PARADIDWi THN BASILEIAN TWi QEWi KAI PATRI,
>> (3) hOTAN KATARGHSHi PASAN ARCHN KAI PASAN EXOUSIAN KAI DUNAMIN.
>>
>> The question is:
>>
>> (a) are the two hOTAN clauses parallel, both connected directly
>> to TO TELOS?
>> (b) or, is the second hOTAN clause (3) connected to the clause
>> of the first
>> hOTAN clause (2)?
>>
>> If (a) is right, we may translate the verse as:
>>
>> Then the end (will come), when he delivers the kingdom to the
>> God and Father,
>> that is, when he has nullified all dominion, all authority and
>> power.
>>
>> If (b) is right, we have the following structure:
>>
>> (1) EITA [ TO TELOS,
>> (2) hOTAN [ PARADIDWi THN BASILEIAN TWi QEWi KAI PATRI,
>> (3) hOTAN KATARGHSHi PASAN ARCHN KAI PASAN
>> EXOUSIAN KAI DUNAMIN ] ]
>>
>> This option is taken by NIV, and its translation is as follows:
>>
>> Then the end will come,
>> when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father
>> after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power.
>>
>
> [CARL]:
>>  I DON'T think that you can succeed at an
> effort to subordinate the notions in the two hOTAN
> clauses one to another -- BOTH would appear to be relative adverbial
> clauses with TO TELOS as antecedent; I can see why some might suppose
> that (3) in your structural outline really needs to occur logically
> and chronologically before (2), I think it is pretty difficult here
> to force a syntactical relationship between (2) and (3). I think
> those two hOTAN clauses are parallel and that they relate temporally
> to TO TELOS rather than one of them temporally to the other of them.
>
>
> [Moon] =>
> Carl, thanks for your comments. My interpretation was the same as your
> interpretation mentioned above. But NIV and major commentaries I  
> consulted
> thought the otherwise. So, I thought it would be a good idea to  
> discuss
> it in b-greek list. I respect your intuition. But would you guess  
> why NIV
> takes this verse as it does?

Although I hesitate to read the minds of interpreters when they  
haven't made any effort to clarify an interpretive departure from  
what the Greek text actually says, my guess is that they are  
conveying in translation what they think is IMPLIED in the Greek  
text. They may also be making some hermeneutical assumptions that  
some others might question. Then there's the matter of translator  
philosophy: if you think an interpretation is "probable" even if you  
can't quite demonstrate its necessary validity, do you go ahead and  
convert it into what you think is probable, or do you leave what is  
an ambiguity in the original an ambiguity in the translation.  
Personally I would prefer to do the latter. I think, however, that  
this question of yours reaches too far over into translation theory  
and that it would be better for you to take it to B-Translation,  
where questions of textual ambiguity and how to deal with it have  
been open to discussion. I really don't feel comfortable discussing  
such questions as WHY translators have handled a passage as they  
have. NET, which normally explains such deviations from the literal  
text, goes along with what NIV does but without offering a reason  
based on the Greek grammar. Now it may be, as George Somsel and Eddie  
Mishoe have suggested, that some suppose the different tense-aspect  
forms of the subjunctive in the two clauses (PARADIDWi and  
KATARGHSHi) do imply a temporal relationship between the events, but  
if that's the case, they haven't offered any such explanation for  
their translations. And so I fall back on the guess that I offered in  
my opening sentence above.


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





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