[B-Greek] Eph 1:9: Going beyond grammar?

Elizabeth Kline kline_dekooning at earthlink.net
Fri Aug 14 14:17:18 EDT 2009


Iver said

> As a translator, this is the kind of topic that I have to wrestle  
> with.
>
> I agree with both you and Carl that the phrase "in Christ" in  
> English is pretty  meaningless and often misleading, because the use  
> of "in" in English is so much  more restricted than the use of EN in  
> Koine Greek.
>
> One of the problems we have to deal with is the holy tradition of  
> concordant  Bible translation. This unhelpful tradition has  
> conditioned us to think that one  ought to use the same phrase in  
> translation when the same phrase occurs in the  original Greek. I  
> don't think it helps to substitute "in Christ" with "in   
> relationship to Christ" or "in union with Christ" (a favorite of the  
> GNB),  because we simply cannot use the same phrase all the time in  
> every context,  because the meaning of the phrase is not the same.
>
> So, when you talk about going beyond the grammar, I suppose you mean  
> going  beyond the word and phrase level to the higher levels of  
> sentence and paragraph.  In a different way, this is repeating what  
> George said: Context, context,  context. The only way to properly  
> understand a phrase like EN AUTWi/CRISTWi is  NOT to translate it by  
> "in (union with) Christ" and then try to see if that  might fit the  
> context. Rather, look at the context to see what meaning fits.   
> Quite often the EN does indicate means as you suggested, and in the  
> case of Eph  1:9, that seems to fit the context best. God decided  
> beforehand that he would  accomplish his plan of salvation by means  
> of what Christ was to do. So, in this  case, I am reasonably  
> satisfied with GNB: "God did what he had purposed, and  made known  
> to us the secret plan he had already decided to complete by means  
> of  Christ." God's Word also translates it well: "He had decided to  
> do this through  Christ."
>
> However, you also mentioned Col 2:11 where NIV says: "In him you  
> were also  circumcised.." That does not communicate the intended  
> meaning at all, and here I  do not like the GNB: "In union with  
> Christ you were circumcised." Here, too, I  think it goes towards  
> "by means of Christ", but "Christ" is often used as a  metonym, and  
> what this metonym refers to, can only be understood from context.   
> Sometimes it is by means of what Christ has done, other times it is  
> by means of  what God has done through Christ, and other times it is  
> by means of what we have  done in response to what Christ did. I  
> would say that this is the intended sense  here. When we came to  
> believe in Christ, we were spiritually circumcised "in the  heart".  
> So, in this case, something like the NLT would be my choice: "When  
> you  came to Christ, you were “circumcised,” but not by a physical  
> procedure. Christ  performed a spiritual circumcision..." In our  
> Danish version we said: "Through  your faith in Christ..."


The following is all off topic for this forum.

  Iver's reference to "the holy tradition of concordant  Bible  
translation" is potentially misleading. Iver's own "holy tradition" is  
mid-twentieth century E.A. Nida meaning based translation. What he is  
objecting to is not "concordant translation" but "direct  
translation"[1] which adopts a policy of not making implicit meaning  
explicit. This is approach correctly recognizes that a vast majority  
of meaning in an utterance is inferential. An attempt to make explicit  
what was inferential in the original text is a self refuting policy.  
The book of Romans would end up being 1,000 pages or more.  If we did  
this with EN XRISTWi we would end up with something like 250 different  
renderings of the same phrase.


[1] An article on direct translation can be found here.
Ernst-August GUTT
http://cogprints.org/2597/1/THEORACC.htm

Elizabeth Kline







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