[B-Greek] Help With Translating Article Adverb

Carl Conrad cwconrad2 at mac.com
Fri Feb 18 14:32:36 EST 2011


On Feb 18, 2011, at 2:16 PM, Robert Campanaro wrote:

> Thank you sir for your response, and I'll try to breath normally ;) We're almost there. So is there a key to identifying this vocabulary item usage, or would this just be part of the art aspect of Bible translation? Thank you again.

I ought to let Barry speak for himself. If his response differs from
mine, I'm sure he will -- he may anyway!! I don't think I'd want
to call this a matter of "art" in Biblical translation. Of course, it's 
not really translation we're concerned with here so much as with
understanding "ordinary" ancient Greek usage. The way that 
one comes to have a good grip on "ordinary" ancient Greek
usage is to read (or speak -- if you have a conversational partner
for ancient Greek ;-) -- voluminously. The use of the article to
indicate that a word is itself being employed like a noun in 
a statement is not really uncommon. But the only way to acquire
a sense of what's common is to read enough to encounter the
recurring items used in ordinary discourse.

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)






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