[B-Greek] TO DE SWMA TOU CRISTOU--can the traditional translation be sustained?
Mark Lightman
lightmanmark at yahoo.com
Sat Feb 27 10:32:22 EST 2010
Thanks, David for posting the whole article. After reading it,
I have a few more things to say, but I want to make sure it's
not just me.
Folks, please read this article and tell us what you think.
The article is pretty short and there are some Greek issues
worth discussing here, I think.
Mark L
FWSFOROS MARKOS
--- On Sat, 2/27/10, David Stuart <m7feettall at yahoo.com> wrote:
From: David Stuart <m7feettall at yahoo.com>
Subject: [B-Greek] TO DE SWMA TOU CRISTOU--can the traditional translation be sustained?
To: b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org, "Mark Lightman" <lightmanmark at yahoo.com>
Date: Saturday, February 27, 2010, 8:05 AM
To help clarify some things, here is a copy of the article that I found through Google scholar, hosted on a pro-sabbatarian site. It is poor quality, and I can only hope they have permission to use it, but I understand that the original JBL article was first printed in a sabbatarian church's ministerial journal, so they may have permission.
http://www.friendsofsabbath.org/Further_Research/Holy%20Days/Col%202_17_Journal%20of%20Biblical%20Literature.pdf
His actual translation seems rather strained, so I didn't post so much in order to look at that, but just to see what folks thought of the use of the genitive, and to see whether it is indeed a problem for DE to connect the two disparate clauses.
Thanks for your thoughts,
David Stuart
Garnder, KS
--- On Sat, 2/27/10, Mark Lightman <lightmanmark at yahoo.com> wrote:
> From: Mark Lightman <lightmanmark at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Re: [B-Greek] TO DE SWMA TOU CRISTOU--can the traditional translation be sustained?
> To: b-greek at lists.ibiblio.org, "David Stuart" <m7feettall at yahoo.com>
> Date: Saturday, February 27, 2010, 4:03 AM
> Hi, David,
>
> To come right out and answer your question, yes indeed
> the
> traditional translation can be sustained.
>
> Let me make sure I understand the guy's argument
> first.
>
> Is he saying the text says "Let no
> one judge you in matters of
> food et cetera, which are only shadows of the things
> to come.
> PERIOD. Rather (DE) (supply 'it's
> all about') the body of Christ."
> ("The important thing is) the body of
> Christ." Or, as the title
> of his article reads: "But (let everyone discern)
> the Body of
> Christ." He appears to be saying that Paul
> intends no
> contrast between "shadows" and
> "body."
>
> If this is what he is saying, I say that his analysis
> is clever,
> far fetched, and not exactly wrong. He seems to
> me to be
> pouncing on the Greek text in order to make the text
> say
> something a little more than it clearly says. As
> often with
> minute grammatical analysis, nothing is really at
> stake here,
> as his DE is still (even more so) contrastive,
> though
> the contrast is now between the practices and
> Jesus.
> He would be asking us to put his grammatical
> hair splitting above what appears to be an
> obvious
> contrast between shadow and SWMA. Or even
> worse, he is saying that Paul intends a
> different
> contrast which picks up and plays off the
> obvious
> contrast.
>
> I may be misrepresenting the argument. I
> AM
> misrepresenting the argument because I do not
> have access to his entire article. If I
> understand
> him properly, I disagree with what he says about
> DE.
>
> You ask:
>
> <What do you all think of his arguments?>
>
> His arguments are fine as far as they go. I
> would
> prefer that if he has something important to say
> about
> what Paul says Jesus and ritual, he come out and
> say it and not get sidetracked by the Greek,
> which
> is clear or unclear, depending on how you look at
>
> it. I would say that many of these JBL articles
> that
> find new meanings based on Greek grammatical
> analysis are of not much value to two groups
> of people--those who do not know Greek and those
> who know Greek well.
>
> Thanks for bringing it to our attention
> though. Stuff like
> this is fun.
>
> Mark L
>
>
> FWSFOROS MARKOS
>
> ---
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