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

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Sun Jun 10 08:51:37 EDT 2007


On Jun 10, 2007, at 8:17 AM, Jonathan Robie wrote:

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

It's IHSOUS (three syllables in the Greek)

>
> 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?

I'd say it shifts the focus from details of Jesus' baptism by John to  
biographical details concerning Jesus: "Jesus himself ... "

>
> 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?

I think we could understand ARCOMENOS in adverbial sense "at the  
outset" (of his teaching, of his ministry, of his public existence);  
of course, you could understand EUAGGELIZOMENOS, DIDASKWN, or the  
like, but I'm not sure that's really necessary. I think the sense is  
fundamentally, "As for Jesus himself, when he started out he was  
about thirty years old ... " The baptism of Jesus by John certainly  
constitutes, for Luke, the point of Jesus' "beginning."

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/





More information about the B-Greek mailing list