[B-Greek] Second attempt - On Aspect
Randall Buth
randallbuth at gmail.com
Mon Apr 30 05:53:29 EDT 2007
Eddie Mishoe <edmishoe at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > > Dr. Buth
> > >
> > > And that makes any Greek aorist indicative
> > > > 'marked for time',
> > > > even in contexts where time would have been
> > > > irrelevant.
> > > >
> > >
> > > Out of curiosity, how do you translate the famous
> > > (proverbial?) EXHRANQH hO CORTOS? The grass
> > witherS?
> > > The grass witherED?
> > >
> > >
> > NAI, you read the Greek for what it is,
> > and you can translate in English however it sounds
> > best in English.
>
> So, how would you translate it?
>
> Eddie Mishoe
I might say
Grass dried, blossoms shriveled!
Or I might say
"The grass withers and the flowers fade"
English doesn't like to use exemplary pasts.
Note well: good English translation finds pleasiing ways of speaking
in English. It is flexible in regard to the source text. That is why I
used 'flowers fade', with alliteration of "f", even though the Hebrew
of Is 40:7 does not use the most generic word for 'flower'. And plural
to add a little semantic syncopation, with assonance and internal
rhyme in "withers...flowers"
How about "the foliage is parched, a blossom blighted." ?
Now a source text must always be read on its own terms. A perennial
problem of students is assuming that the gridwork of their language of
translation is somehow real in the source language. In this case, an
English proverbial "present", if found in a translation, becomes
irrelevant to the gridwork of the source.
The Hebrew author and the Greek translator preserved a past tense
reference when encoding this saying.
If you are asking for a transfer-explained-being-ness translation,
then you would be required to use the past tense in English:
"grass withered and a flower faded".
"grass was parched and blossoms were brown
whenever the breath of the Lord blew."
Hey, I kinda like the last one, but I was looking at the Hebrew,
while waxing woeful in English.
OK now that we're having fun--
What? You don't know the English word "transfer-explained-being-ness"?
I am simply putting English words on the morphemes of the greek word
MEQERMHNEUOMENON.
Will it ever get to the point where *AURION HLQEN O ANQRWPOS
(*Tomorrow the man came) starts to make sense?! Sends shivers down
one's spine. Apparently, the ancient Greeks were allergic to
'spine-shivering' and would never say *AURION HLQEN O ANQRWPOS, or at
least wouldn't record it for posterity. The ancient Greeks actually
thought that their verbs had time in their system.
ERRWSO 'be healthy'
and be careful of writing emails after a good cup of coffee,
Randall
--
Randall Buth, PhD
www.biblicalulpan.org
χάρις ὑμῖν καὶ εἰρήνη πληθυνθείη
שלום לכם וברכות
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randallbuth at gmail.com
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