[B-Greek] Luke 3:23 KAI AUTOS HN iHSOUS ARXOMENOS hWSEI ETON TRIAKONTA

Jonathan Robie jwrobie at mindspring.com
Sun Jun 10 08:17:21 EDT 2007


Luke 3:23 KAI AUTOS HN iHSOUS ARXOMENOS hWSEI ETON TRIAKONTA

Luke 3:23 Καὶ αὐτὸς ἦν Ἰησοῦς ἀρχόμενος ὡσεὶ ἐτῶν τριάκοντα

To me, this phrase raises two interesting questions.

1. The use of AUTOS - is it functioning primarily to shift the emphasis 
from John to Jesus, or does it convey more than that?

2. *What* was Jesus beginning? Robertson's Word Pictures says there is 
an implied "to teach". Almost all older translations (I've looked at a 
bunch in English, German, Dutch, and French) say something along the 
lines of "began to be about thirty years of age", which Robertson calls 
"an impossible translation". In modern English, we do say things like, 
"he was beginning to be a teenager", or "he was beginning to be middle 
aged", so especially if 30 years was considered a milestone age, it 
doesn't seem to be too much of a stretch to say "he was beginning to be 
about 30". Is there any precedent for this kind of usage in Greek?

Of course, in context, the other likely meaning is that Jesus himself 
started to do the things that John was doing, which is why the two 
questions are related ... but to me, if I were to take this 
interpretation, I'd probably avoid being quite as specific as "to 
teach", and say something more like "And Jesus, when he was about 30, 
also began to do such things ...", where such things refers to the 
things that John did. Hmm, just checked the NET translation, which uses 
"his ministry".

Is there any reason to prefer one of these interpretations over the other?

Jonathan



More information about the B-Greek mailing list