[B-Greek] TO DE SWMA TOU CRISTOU--can the traditional translation be sustained?
Mark Lightman
lightmanmark at yahoo.com
Sun Feb 28 07:07:11 EST 2010
Thanks Barry, Carl, Elizabeth and Iver for reading the
article and sharing your thoughts. You guys all basically
saw the same things in there that I did. Great minds think
alike. Then there is me...
I think you have your answer, David. Just a few
concluding (for me) thoughts:
Everything that Martin says flows from his premise that
TO DE SWMA TOU CRISTOU cannot be in contrast to the
rituals/shadows because DE cannot connect two phrases
which are grammatically dissimilar. He appears to get this by
reading BDF in the same woodenly literal manner that a bad
exegete reads Greek. Here is Martin's footnote 6 on page of
250
"According to BDF 438 the conjunction DE is always coordinating
and coordinating conjunctions are 'those which connect elements
in sentence structure which are on par with each other.'"
I don't have a copy of BDF, but you don't have to look anything up to
know that Martin is totally taking this out of context. Don't talk about
the Greek. Just use common sense. It's true that in English the
word "and" usually connects phrases that are grammatically
similar. You would not usually say "Go get me a cream soda and
the sky is blue." But does this mean that "and" can never connect
phrases with slightly different, or really different, grammar? That, if I say
"Don't let anyone judge Albert Pujols for his fielding which is gravy, but
the meat of the guy is that he can hit the ball" I must not be
drawing a contrast between "gravy" and "meat" because "and"
can only connect phrases on par with each other? Granted, what I
I just wrote is a little stilted, but would anyone doubt what
I meant? Would anyone go back and pour over the my previous
sentences and try to connect the phrase "the meat of the guy
is that he can hit" with something else or assume that there is
some ellipsis? Would anyone ask what kind of genitive is
"of the guy?'"
This is what Martin does. He asserts that Paul meant
"Let no one judge (KRINW) you about rituals which are shadows.
(Supply rather Let each of you discern (KRINW) the body of Christ."
He does this by claiming to know how Greek ellipses work. (I don't,
by the way. To me it seems hard to know what a guy does not say.)
He is literally reading stuff into Paul's mind rather than accept the
fact that we may not know exactly what kind of genitive TOU
CRISTOU is here. As I think Elizabeth is saying, grammar
trumps simple meaning. Grammatical analysis trumps common
sense.
David, I know your question was not about Martin, who I'm sure
is a great guy, but about the phrase itself. Granted that Paul's
grammar is a bit stilted here, as it often is. I'm not exactly sure
what kind of genitive this is, but I agree with Iver that it's not
all that difficult, The meaning is clear. The Modern Greek
renders the phrase ενω η ουσια βρισκεται (ευρισκεται) εις τον
Χριστον ENW hH OUSIA BRISTKETAI EIS TON CRISTON
Presumably OUSIA, like SWMA, is in contrast to the shadows/rituals.
You see, the tone of Martin is all wrong. I would have no problem if he were to
say "The Greek is a little tough here. Just for fun, consider if we might
understand it this way." Read his article again for yourself. To me he seems
to sound like the Preacher whom Jeff R. warns us against. "All the
translations get this wrong. What the Greek REALLY says is this..."
I enjoyed Martin's article. I really did. I enjoyed TALKING about
Martin's article. Plunging into the Greek makes you think. I
am on record as saying everybody on the List, beginners and
veterans alike, should be encouraged to take a fresh look at
the Greek to see if there is something that everyone else has
missed. Last summer George S. proposed the idea that in Gal
1:6, TOU KALESANTOS refers not to the "calling God" but
to the "calling Gospel." This struck me as a bit far fetched,
but I supported George for sharing this and I thought it was wonderful.
But George's tone was very different from Martin's. George did
not suggest that because Smyth says this Paul must be saying
that. George did not use his insight to hammer home any theological
point. Not that Martin does that in this article either, but I cannot
help but wonder if there is a legalistic agenda in his idea that Paul does not
mean "shadows" in a bad way. That's not fair. Now, I'm reading
stuff into Martin. If he is out there, maybe he can speak for himself.
That's what's great about B-Greek.
It's just that I cannot help but think of what Andrew S said recently,
about how all pulpit Greek does is clothe you in an
air of false authority for those who don't know Greek and allows you to
read into the text fanciful meanings that one would never do with the
English.
I don't know. This sort of thing did not use to bother me as much.
But when I read an article like this, I can't help thinking that maybe,
if we really want to understand the Word, we are better off using
a little wine (1 Tim 5:23) than a little Greek. Or, a lot of Greek.
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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