[B-Greek] PASA GRAFH QEOPNEUSTOS KAID WFELIMOS--2 Timothy 3:16

Leonard Jayawardena leonardj at live.com
Sun Jul 26 10:09:32 EDT 2009


 
My thanks to all who responded to my posts on the above subject.
 
My parallel to 2 Timothy 3:16 from Mark 2:26 is certainly not perfect as in the one case we have two adjectives and two genitives in the other. In the absence of a parallel containing two adjectives, this is the best I can do at the moment. But the point of comparison between the two verses is this. Mark 2:28 contains two genitives which we would not normally separate but are compelled to because the parallels, the context and our prior knowledge of the expression "the son of man" demand it. The predicative construction of QEOPNEUSTOS results in a translation, as either "All scripture is God-breathed and profitable, etc." or "Every scripture is God-breathed and profitable, etc.," which is not exegetically acceptable to me, because I do not think that the statement that all scriptures are God-breathed can be proved from the Bible (a demonstration of that lies beyond the scope of this forum). For me a predicative construction of QEOPNEUSTOS results in a contradiction in the Bible which is not acceptable to me, though I am not an inerrantist.  So what does a person in that fix do?  An attributive QEOPNEUSTOS does yield a translation ("Every God-breathed writing is also profitable, etc.") that avoids this contradiction--Don't ask me how it does that, for that would take us to the realm of exegesis. A predicative QEOPNEUSTOS has Paul making a serious error, so, to avoid that, I adopt a construction that separates the two adjectives linked by KAI, just as the two genitives in Mark 2:28 are separated to obtain a meaningful translation. That is the point of comparison. In the case of Mark 2:28, nobody asks for an exact parallel before accepting the translation "so that the son of man is Lord also (or even) of the sabbath"--that translation is just taken for granted--so why am I required to produce a parallel to my translation "Every God-breathed writing is also profitable, etc."?

With regard to Mark L.'s inquiry, I am not writing my article against a deadline. I can submit it for publication (on the Web) whenever it is ready.
 
Vasileios Tsialas wrote:
 
Quote
 
Interestingly NET gives the following
comments: 'Some have connected this adjective in a different way and translated
it as "every inspired scripture is also useful." But this violates
the parallelism of the two adjectives in the sentence, and the arrangement of
words makes clear that both should be taken as predicate adjectives: "every scripture is inspired and useful."'
 
End of quote

May I adapt it as follows:  'Some have connected the second genitive in Mark 2:28 in a different way and translated it as "so that the son of man is Lord also of the sabbath." But this violates the parallelism of the two genitives in the sentence, and the arrangement of words makes clear that both should be taken as genitives modifying the noun "son': "the son of man and of the sabbath."' ???

Vasileios Tsialas' post raises certain other issues relevant to my interest and I will respond to them in a separate post.
 
Leonard Jayawardena
Sri Lanka



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