From: Jonathan Robie (74144.2360@compuserve.com)
Date: Wed Aug 28 1996 - 10:44:56 EDT
> It seems to me that Jonathan Robie's suggestion DOES have merit: the
> value of learning Greek is not to improve upon exisiting
> translations. I took this to mean, not that there are no passages
> where the translation is problematic, but that none of us "little
> Greeks" is going to produce a New Testament that is superior overall
> to the existing ones. Apparently either Dale or I have misunderstood
> him.
Randy,
This is precisely what I meant. Dale's message does miss what I intended
to say. IMHO, the goal for us "little Greeks" shouldn't be to do a better job of
translating
into English, but to understand the original Greek better. Dale points out that
modern translations may differ significantly. This is true -- in fact, one of
the big
reasons I got into Greek was that our small groups had a number of Bible
translations,
and they sometimes differed enough to affect our interpretation of the
scripture.
In general, if I want to improve on the translation of a passage, or see new
insights
in the Greek which I didn't see in the English, I feel the need to get the
opinion of a
"big Greek".
Jonathan
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