[B-Greek] PASA GRAGH QEOPNEUSTOS KAI WFELIMOS--2 Timothy 3:16
Aaron Marshall
greekmeister1 at hotmail.com
Sat Jul 25 05:07:37 EDT 2009
I'm going to post this again because I think I did it wrong, so if you receive two copies of this post then just consider yourself doubly blessed. :)
Hi Leonard,
I think the flaw in your argument is contained in your statement:
BoQ:
If these Greek words stood alone and you had never come across the phrase "son of man" before, how many of you would translate them as "so that the son of man is Lord even of the sabbath"?
EoQ
Yes, maybe, but this is a fallacious argument. One cannot effectively interpret a string of written communication apart of a consideration of the context in which that string resides. The string hWSTE KYRIOS ESTIN hO YIOS TOU ANQRWPOU KAI TOU SABBATOU has no meaning whatsoever apart from its relationship with the Koine language in general, the NT, the gospel of Mark, and Jesus' speech patterns. Context is everything in interpretation. What your statement I quoted above reveals is that you know that anyone with a knowledge of Mark and the parallel passages may (if they're not an expert, as I am not) briefly consider what we think to be the intuitive meaning ("The son of man and of the Sabbath is Lord") and then realize the correct meaning ("The son of man is Lord even of the Sabbath"). So, you want to use this as an example of a situation where the intuitive (normal, expected) meaning is wrong (taking the two genitives as joined by the KAI and modifying hUIOS) and the counter-intuitive (not normal, unexpected) meaning is right (the two genitives are not joined by the KAI and do not modify the same noun). In your mind this proves that in some cases one can interpret a Koine sentence in a way one would not normally do so (2 Tim. 3:16), thus by-passing Archer's argument. I would say that Mark 2:28 is not a good example of this because the accepted meaning (the son of man is lord even of the sabbath) is not at all counter-intuitive once we take into account that pesky context you want us to forget about. I hope I made myself clear. I probably did not.
Aaron Marshall
> From: leonardj at live.com
> To: b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org
> Date: Fri, 24 Jul 2009 15:25:13 +0600
> Subject: [B-Greek] PASA GRAGH QEOPNEUSTOS KAI WFELIMOS--2 Timothy 3:16
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> In his "Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties," Gleason L. Archer writes, under the entry "2 Timothy," as follows:
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> Quote
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> So far as I am aware, no twentieth century English translation has followed RV and ASV in rendering [QEOPNEUSTOS] as an attributive adjective, whether their translators were liberal or conservative in their theological outlook. The reason for this is that no other instance can be found in New Testament Greek where an attributive adjective is connected with a predicate adjective by means of a [KAI] ("and"). The verb "to be" is omitted in this clause; therefore it must be supplied either before or after [QEOPNEUSTOS]. But since [QEOPNEUSTOS] is followed by [KAI] and a second adjective, [WFELIMOS],which everyone agrees is predicate, it necessarily follows that [QEOPNEUSTOS] also is predicate. Hence the only legitimate translation is "All Scripture [ or 'Every Scripture'] (is) God-breathed and profitable..."
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> Unquote
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> Is is it a valid argument to say that translation "X" is not legitimate because such a structure is not found in New Testament Greek? With my limited knowledge of Greek, it seems more grammatically regular to translate the words hWSTE KYRIOS ESTIN hO YIOS TOU ANQRWPOU KAI TOU SABBATOU in Mark 2:28 as "so that the son of man and of the sabbath is Lord" rather than as "so that the son of man is Lord also (or even) of the sabbath," as they are always rendered in NT translations, but the latter translation is required (a) by comparison with the parallels in Mt. 12:8 and Lk. 6:5 (though a variant reading has the same wording as Mark 2:28); and (b) because the former translation makes no sense. But if these Greek words stood alone and you had never come across the phrase "son of man" before, how many of you would translate them as "so that the son of man is Lord even of the sabbath"? Note that the two genitives of Mk. 2:28, which are joined by KAI, are separated, with the first mod
> ifying the subject and the second becoming a part of the predicate. A similar separation happens to QEOPNEUSTOS KAI WFELIMOS when the former is rendered attributively.
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> Is there a parallel to Mark 2:28 elsewhere in NT Greek or is it unique? If latter, wouldn't that vitiate Archer's argument that QEOPNEUSTOS should not be rendered attributively because "no other instance can be found in New Testament Greek where an attributive adjective is connected with a predicate adjective by means of a [KAI]..."?
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> I would much appreciate readers' comments on both Archer's objections to an attributive translation of QEOPNEUSTOS and my critique of them. Also,is anyone aware of an even better example to counter Archer's argument than my example from Mk. 2:28?
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> Leonard Jayawardena
> Sri Lanka
>
> P.S. In a private correspondence quite sometime ago, a member of this forum raised a similar objection to my translation of 2 Timothy 3:16, which incidentally is "Every God-breathed writing is also profitable, etc.," and this post will serve also as a response to that (if he still reads this forum).
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