[B-Greek] Acts 7,26A
Iver Larsen
iver_larsen at sil.org
Mon Mar 22 10:46:25 EST 2004
> THi TE EPIOUSHi hHMERAi WFQH AUTOIS MACOMENOIS KAI SUNHLLASSEN AUTOUS EIS
> EIRHNHN EIPWN,
>
> The NET Bible goes like this:
>
> 7:26 The next day Moses saw two men fighting, and tried to make
> peace between them, saying,
>
> The passive WFQH is somewhat hard to translate in my thinking. The NET
> translators apparently thought so and gave it an active sense (he
> saw). How does
> WFQH AUTOIS MACOMENOIS fit together syntactically?
> _________
>
> With all due respect to the translators of the NET Bible, they
> got this one
> wrong. It does not say that Moses saw them but rather that "he
> appeared" (Lit:
> "he was seen by them"). Check some other translations and you
> will see that
> this is the way it is usually translated. While I don't recommend simply
> following what everyone else has done, one should have a good
> reason when he
> wishes to take "the road less travelled." At the very least, the
> NET, which
> usually has copious notes (or so I've been told), should have
> noted how they were
> departing from the normal translation and the reason.
>
George, which is your standard "normal" translation? Is it the NASB or RSV?
Both of them give a rendering that is very poor and unnatural English: "he
appeared to them". KJV is even worse. NIV and REB are much better when they
say "he came upon". NLT says "he visited them again" referring to Moses as
an Egyptian prince walking around among his own people or the common people
and suddenly coming upon two Israelites who were fighting. It is not wrong
to translate a passive verb with an active verb, and I would not say that
the NET is wrong, because one of its goals is to use ordinary English. The
idea that every passive verb in the original must be translated by a passive
verb in English is at variance with normal translation principles as used by
professional translators.
Iver Larsen
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