How do I go about translating Romans 5:6?

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kpkr333
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How do I go about translating Romans 5:6?

Post by kpkr333 »

Hi! I'm currently going through Ben Merkle's and Robert Plummer's "Beginning with New Testament Greek". I'm on chapter 19 and I'm doing some translation exercises. I have to translate the following from Romans 5:6
ἔτι γὰρ Χριστὸς ὄντων ἡμῶν ἀσθενῶν (weak) ἔτι κατὰ καιρὸν ὑπὲρ ἀσεβῶν (ungodly) ἀπέθανεν
The translation that makes the most amount of sense to me right now is
"Yet indeed Christ - while we were still weak - at the right time, died for the ungodly"
But they translate it as
"For while we were yet weak, at the right season/time, Christ died for the ungodly"
I'm not sure how they got this or how other translators translate it in a similar way to them. Can someone please help me understand? I'm sorry if this is a silly question :p
Jason Hare
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Re: How do I go about translating Romans 5:6?

Post by Jason Hare »

kpkr333 wrote: August 31st, 2023, 12:57 pm Hi! I'm currently going through Ben Merkle's and Robert Plummer's "Beginning with New Testament Greek". I'm on chapter 19 and I'm doing some translation exercises. I have to translate the following from Romans 5:6
ἔτι γὰρ Χριστὸς ὄντων ἡμῶν ἀσθενῶν (weak) ἔτι κατὰ καιρὸν ὑπὲρ ἀσεβῶν (ungodly) ἀπέθανεν
The translation that makes the most amount of sense to me right now is
"Yet indeed Christ - while we were still weak - at the right time, died for the ungodly"
But they translate it as
"For while we were yet weak, at the right season/time, Christ died for the ungodly"
I'm not sure how they got this or how other translators translate it in a similar way to them. Can someone please help me understand? I'm sorry if this is a silly question :p
From BrillDAG:
ἔτῐ cf. Lat. and Umbr. et, Skt. áti, Goth. iþ, Av. aiti- adv. ⓐ still, of time (referring to the pres., past and fut.): ἄλγε’ ἔδωκεν … ἠδʼ ἔ. δώσει he has given grief and will give it still IL. 1.96; ἔ. καὶ νῦν still even now IL. 1.455; ἠμὲν πάλαι ἠδʼ ἔ. καὶ νῦν, ἐξ ἔ. τοῦ ὅτε a long time already and still even now, since the time when IL. 9.106; εἰ Ζεὺς ἔ. Ζεύς if Zeus is still Zeus SOPH. O.C. 623; ἔ. καὶ νυνί still now PLAT. Symp. 215d; ἔ. πρόσθεν still earlier PLAT. Soph. 242d; ἔτι νυκτός while it was still night CHARIT. 2.1.1; ἔτʼ ἐκ βρέφεος still from childhood ANTIP. (AP 9.567.1) ‖ s.times with fut. one day, in the future AESCHL. Pr. 907 SOPH. El. 218 etc. ‖ with neg. no longer, see οὐκέτι, μηκέτι; οὐδʼ ἄρʼ ἔτι δὴν ἵππω δευέσθην σημάντορος nor did the two horses fail the guide for a long time still IL. 8.126; ἔτʼ οὐχ οἵα τε she is no longer able SOPH. O.T. 24; οὐδέν εἰμ’ ἔ. I am no more SOPH. El. 218 ⓑ still, besides IL. 6.411, al. etc.; ἕτερόν γ’ ἔ. still another OD. 14.325; ἔτʼ ἄλλο τέταρτον still a (another) fourth HES. Op. 157; τίν’ οὖν ἔτʼ ἄλλον who no longer another AESCHL. Ch. 114; καὶ πρὸς τοῖσδʼ ἔ. and besides, and on top of these SOPH. Ph. 1339; πρὸς τούτοις ἔ. τοῖσι κακοῖς in addition to all these woes ARISTOPH. Nub. 720; ἔ. δὲ καί and besides THUC. 1.80.3 etc.; ἔ. τε moreover, still more PLAT. Phaedr. 279a | in enumeration πρῶτον μέν … ἔπειτα δέ … ἔ. δέ at first … then … moreover XEN. An. 6.6.13 etc. | to reinforce (with compar. and adv.) ἔ. μᾶλλον or μᾶλλον ἔ. still more IL. 14.97, al. OD. 18.22 etc. = ἔ. πλέον or πλέον ἔ. HDT. 7.6.2 THUC. 1.80.4 etc. = ἔ. μάλα: ἔτι τούτοις μάλα above all for these ARISTOPH. Pax 53, al.; κἄτι τοῦδʼ ἀνούστερος and still more stupid than this AESCHL. Pr. 987 (cf. SOPH. O.T. 272); ἔ. ἄνω still more inside XEN. An. 7.5.9 in arsis IL. 6.139 ‖ crasis καὶ ἔ. > κἄτι Ion. κἤτι.

Franco Montanari, The Brill Dictionary of Ancient Greek (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2015).
The first ἔτι governs the whole sentence and functions logically. The second ἔτι governs the participial phrase. This is the word that makes the sentence awkward, and it might explain why there are a lot of textual variants in this verse.

“For moreover, Christ—we still being weak—at the right time died for the ungodly.”
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Re: How do I go about translating Romans 5:6?

Post by Jason Hare »

As a matter of decorum, could you please put your name in the signature line of your posts by adding a signature here?
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Eeli Kaikkonen
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Re: How do I go about translating Romans 5:6?

Post by Eeli Kaikkonen »

Jason Hare
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Re: How do I go about translating Romans 5:6?

Post by Jason Hare »

Eeli Kaikkonen wrote: September 3rd, 2023, 2:12 pm Jason, do you mean you would interpret it as in

http://opentext.org/texts/NT/Rom/view/c ... h5.v0.html

rather than in

https://syntacticus.org/sentence/proiel ... k-nt:64015

?
Admittedly, it feels weird to have ἔτι appear after the verb it modifies like this, but yes.
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Jonathan Robie
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Re: How do I go about translating Romans 5:6?

Post by Jonathan Robie »

I had exactly this question back in 2012, and there was a great thread on it:

https://www.ibiblio.org/bgreek/forum/vi ... php?t=1101

FWIW, "ἔτι κατὰ" is not a common sequence. It seems to occur only once in SBLGNT:

https://www.biblegateway.com/quicksearc ... ion=SBLGNT

But the Septuagint has a few occurrences:

Ezekiel 5:9

καὶ ποιήσω ἐν σοὶ
ἃ οὐ πεποίηκα
καὶ ἃ οὐ ποιήσω ὅμοια αὐτοῖς ἔτι
κατὰ πάντα τὰ βδελύγματά σου.

Here, I think καὶ ἃ οὐ ποιήσω ὅμοια αὐτοῖς ἔτι corresponds to the Hebrew וְאֵ֛ת אֲשֶֽׁר־לֹֽא־אֶעֱשֶׂ֥ה כָמֹ֖הוּ ע֑וֹד

I'm also looking at 3 Maccabees 4:18, still chewing on the best way to regard ἔτι κατὰ here:

καίπερ ὄντων ἔτι κατὰ τὴν χώραν τῶν πλειόνων, τῶν μὲν κατὰ τὰς οἰκίας ἔτι συνεστηκότων, τῶν δὲ καὶ κατὰ τόπον, ὡς ἀδυνάτου καθεστῶτος πᾶσιν τοῖς ἐπ᾽ Αἴγυπτον στρατηγοῖς.

Suggestions?
ἐξίσταντο δὲ πάντες καὶ διηποροῦντο, ἄλλος πρὸς ἄλλον λέγοντες, τί θέλει τοῦτο εἶναι;
http://jonathanrobie.biblicalhumanities.org/
Eeli Kaikkonen
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Re: How do I go about translating Romans 5:6?

Post by Eeli Kaikkonen »

I don't think this sequence has much relevance here, except that these examples show that ἔτι can be the last word in a phrase. Even as the poetically split lines show in Ezekiel, κατὰ belongs to the next phrase. Because the splits between phrases are after ἔτι, it means the next word can be anything which begins a phrase.

The Lexham English Septuagint, 3Macc 4:18:
"Although the majority were still in the country, some who had conspired were still in their houses..."

Code: Select all

καίπερ ὄντων ἔτι
        κατὰ τὴν χώραν
τῶν πλειόνων
Notice how the English has two times "still in" but the original has different constituent order, so there's only one "ἔτι κατὰ".
Eeli Kaikkonen
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Re: How do I go about translating Romans 5:6?

Post by Eeli Kaikkonen »

Actually, the both passages could be analyzed like this, with three modifiers for one verb:
  • οὐ ποιήσω ὅμοια αὐτοῖς
  • οὐ ποιήσω ἔτι
  • οὐ ποιήσω κατὰ πάντα τὰ βδελύγματά σου
And
  • ὄντων ἔτι
  • ὄντων κατὰ τὴν χώραν
  • ὄντων τῶν πλειόνων
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Re: How do I go about translating Romans 5:6?

Post by Jonathan Robie »

Eeli Kaikkonen wrote: September 7th, 2023, 6:01 pm I don't think this sequence has much relevance here, except that these examples show that ἔτι can be the last word in a phrase.
I agree. But the query gives us examples to examine and check that.

We can do the same thing without specifying the following word, and get examples like these, which indicate this is not unusual:

John 18:30
ἀλλ’ ἦν ἔτι
ἐν τῷ τόπῳ
ὅπου ὑπήντησεν αὐτῷ ἡ Μάρθα.

Hebrews 8:12
ὅτι ἵλεως ἔσομαι ταῖς ἀδικίαις αὐτῶν,
καὶ τῶν ἁμαρτιῶν αὐτῶν
οὐ μὴ μνησθῶ ἔτι.

Heb 10:18
καὶ τῶν ἁμαρτιῶν αὐτῶν
καὶ τῶν ἀνομιῶν αὐτῶν
οὐ μὴ μνησθήσομαι ἔτι·

Rev 3:12
ὁ νικῶν ποιήσω αὐτὸν στῦλον ἐν τῷ ναῷ τοῦ θεοῦ μου,
καὶ ἔξω οὐ μὴ ἐξέλθῃ ἔτι

Rev 7:16
οὐ πεινάσουσιν ἔτι
οὐδὲ διψήσουσιν ἔτι,
οὐδὲ μὴ πέσῃ ἐπ’ αὐτοὺς ὁ ἥλιος οὐδὲ πᾶν καῦμα,
ἐξίσταντο δὲ πάντες καὶ διηποροῦντο, ἄλλος πρὸς ἄλλον λέγοντες, τί θέλει τοῦτο εἶναι;
http://jonathanrobie.biblicalhumanities.org/
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