[B-Greek] The Elephant on the List
John M. Linebarger
jmlineb at comcast.net
Thu Feb 18 13:39:30 EST 2010
I'd like to gently challenge one of the statements in Mark Lightman's post:
> The English Translations, taken as a whole, are always MORE clear than the Greek; they always convey MORE information about the underlying Greek text than the Greek text itself does.
How is this possible? If a translation is more clear than the original, surely it is because the translators have chosen one of the interpretive options allowed by the original and reflected it consistently in their translation. However, clarity is not the same as accuracy, and only an inspection of the original will reveal other interpretive options that are available. I would contend that in those situations, the "clear" translation is actually achieved by *reducing* the amount of information present in the original.
This phenomenon, in my mind, by itself justifies the heavy investment in learning Greek and studying the text in the original.
What say you?
John M. Linebarger
Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA
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