[B-Greek] Ambiguity

Timothy S. Nelson wayland at wayland.id.au
Sat Feb 6 22:50:00 EST 2010


On Sat, 6 Feb 2010, George F Somsel wrote:

> I think the usual German term is Wiedergeburt.
>
> The term "born again" dates at least to the time of John Wycliffe who 
> translated (from the Latin) rendered Jn 3.1-7 as

 	Something slightly similar, from earlier.

 	Where Wycliffe has:

> 3 Jhesus answerde, and seide to hym, Treuli, treuli, Y seie to thee, but a 
> man be borun ayen, he may not se the kyngdom of God.

 	An Old English version (probably 600-700ADish):

http://wordhord.org/nasb/john.html

 	Says:

: 3 Se Hælend him andswarude and cwæð, ‘Soð ic þe secge, buton hwa beo edniwan 
: gecenned, ne mæg he geseon Godes rice.’

 	For those of you who are unfamiliar with Old English, it would be 
something like this in a literalistic slightly Modern English:

3 The Healer him answered and quoth "Sooth I thee say, but who be again-new 
born, not may he see God's reich"

 	I mostly went with the most related-appearing word, even in semantic 
drift had changed the meaning; for example, the dictionary suggested both 
"healer" and "saviour" for Hælend, and suggested both "but" and "without" for 
buton.

 	Anyway, my point is, "edniwian", which I've rendered as "again-new", 
is definitely on the "again" side of the "again"/"above" line.  Presumably 
this is also from the Vulgate, although I have no reason for thinking this 
other than that it was the right era.

 	(Not often I have a use for the smattering of Old English I've picked 
up; hope I didn't get /too/ far off-topic).

 	:)


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| Name: Tim Nelson                 | Because the Creator is,        |
| E-mail: wayland at wayland.id.au    | I am                           |
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