[B-Greek] Question about John 10:18

Iver Larsen iver_larsen at sil.org
Fri Feb 1 11:26:57 EST 2008


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Matthew Blair" <mpblair at gmail.com>


> Greetings again,
>
> I'm working on the exercises for Chapter 13 (demonstrative pronouns) in BBG,
> and the first translation exercise is a fragment from John 10:18.
>
> TAUTHN THN ENTOLHN ELABON PARA TOU PATROS MOU
>
> this the commandment I received from father my
>
> Since the demonstrative pronoun is functioning as an adjective, it is in the
> same case as the noun ENTOLHN.  Since ENTOLHN is in the accusative case, I
> translated this sentence as
>
> "I received this commandment from my Father."
>
> However, the answer key (and the NIV) translate this sentence as:
>
> "This commandment I received from my Father."
>
> Both translations are identical in meaning, in my opinion.  Is there a
> reason why one would choose the NIV translation?

As a bible translator, I wouldn't choose any of them, but probably say something like:
"This command is something I have received from my father."
(But then, I am not a native English speaker, so this may not be the most natural way of saying it).

A similar focus is expressed by more idiomatic translations like:
NLT: "For this is what my Father has commanded."
TEV: "This is what my Father has commanded me to do."

You will often, but not always, find that the idiomatic translations do a better job of catching the 
correct nuances of meaning than any of the literal versions like NIV, RSV, NRSV etc.

As has already been said, you don't get to understand a Greek statement from comparing English 
translations, although that can be helpful at times. The real question is what is the function of 
Greek word order. I disagree with those who say that word order does not change the meaning of a 
sentence. Of course, English does not have the same free word order that Greek has, so the 
differences of meaning indicated by word order in Greek are usually indicated in English by stress - 
which is unfortunately not marked in the writing system.

Try to compare the following:

(1)  TAUTHN THN ENTOLHN ELABON PARA TOU PATROS MOU
(2)  THN ENTOLHN TAUTHN ELABON PARA TOU PATROS MOU
(3)  ELABON THN ENTOLHN TAUTHN PARA TOU PATROS MOU
(4)  PARA TOU PATROS MOU ELABON THN ENTOLHN TAUTHN

What is the difference in meaning between them? (And there are more options.)

Many people say that the basic, unmarked word order in Hellenistic Greek is Verb - Subject - 
Object - Peripherals
That would be number 3. Others say that word order is so flexible that it is not relevant or 
significant to postulate a theoretical basic word order. I prefer this option.

Therefore I prefer to talk about relative prominence. If A is mentioned before B, A tend to be more 
prominent than B. This is a simplified and somewhat simplistic description, but it is still helpful. 
So, in (3) the event of receiving the command is slightly more prominent that what was received and 
from whom.
In (4) the source of the command is prominent. It came from my father and no one else.
in (1) there is some prominence on THIS very command, while in (2) the prominence is on the command 
rather than the demonstrative.

If you have or can get hold of an electronic version of the Greek text with the option of producing 
interactive concordances, you can easily look at all the cases in John where the demonstrative 
precedes the noun and where it follows. Looking at each context will help you to get a feel for the 
significance of the different orders.

Iver Larsen 




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