Stoned-Campbell Disciple

Previous contributions on this thread are linked here: Ancestry of the KJV #1; Ancestry of the KJV #2; Ancestry of the KJV #3; Ancestry of the KJV #4

Just a few thoughts on Greek and translation. In order to show in the clearest manner of the difficulty in this I will point out a few differences between English and Greek. Translation is not simply a matter of looking up a “definition” in the back of Strong’s Concordance and then thinking we can “translate.” First words never have a single definition but a semantic range of meaning. Second words get meaning from being in association or relationship with other words (in a sentence and a paragraph). In this brief article we will look at some interesting features of the language of the New Testament, Greek, that influence how we got our Bible and its translation.

Sentence Structure

The beginning point may well be the difference in structure of the unit of language . . . a sentence. At nearly all stages Greek tended toward long and involved sentences, called by stylists “periods.” Short sentences with connectives were avoided by the use of participial constructions, and dependent clauses introduced by conjunctions with verbs in dependent moods, or infinitives.

For example, the first paragraph after the salutation of the Epistle to the Ephesians runs eleven verses, twenty-eight lines, in Nestle-Aland’s Greek New Testament. That is long, and complex, by anyone’s standards. In terms of our eighth grade English teacher it is a run-on sentence that never seems to end!

The literalistic American Standard Version attempts to reproduce this entire paragraph in one single sentence in English. It does so by the unnatural (to English) use of colons and dashes.

Earlier in the 20th century, E. J. Goodspeed rendered better by casting the participles, relative clauses and infinitives into six English sentences. The Today’s English Version does an even better job (in my opinion). The NIV is quite natural in English as well. There are other areas in structure that cause problems for translation but this is a basic example.

The Greek Definite Article

Few things illustrate the disparity between English and Greek better than the use of the Greek article. First, the absence of an indefinite article in Greek forces the translator to become an interpreter in nearly all cases as to whether the anarthrous Greek noun is indefinite ( “a” or “an”) or qualitative. In many cases where Greek has no article the noun is still definite and must be translated with an article in English. These include such constructions as the Hebrew construct state, Colwell’s rule where the definite noun usually omits the article if it precedes the copulative verb, the omission of the article in the rule of regimen, and after prepositions.

On the other hand, the tendency to use the article in Greek with well-known items at first mention, with class nouns, with the second mention of a noun which is indefinite at first mention (anaphora) especially with proper names and abstract nouns illustrate the opposite tendency. Thus the tendency to translate the Greek and to omit it where it is not present in Greek is a rule of thumb with many pitfalls.

Constructions Lacking in either English or Greek

A list of constructions which exist either in English or Greek but not the other is revealing. The following examples are suggestive rather than exhaustive. Greek has no gerund. It cannot use the participle in naming or speaking of an action such as “walking is a good exercise.” This lack is usually supplied by a nominal use of an infinitive in Greek, though nearly all versions use the participle in translating.

The Greek participle used with the definite article as a substantive does not occur in English. In such cases translators usually resort to a relative clause: “the one who sows.” Greek has a third person imperative, which we can only paraphrase in English. An Optative mood exists in Greek and though it was disappearing in NT times it still occurs 65 times in the NT.

Greek has a middle voice expressing what the subject does “for him/herself” . . . this is interpreted into English with a reflexive pronoun. Greek has five case forms for substantives; English retains case form only in pronouns and even then only three. The differences can be compensated for in many ways usually with prepositional phrases such as “of” for the genitive of possession or “in” with the locative of place. This list could be much extended but the effect on so called “literal” translation is obvious.

Ambiguous Constructions in Greek

Greek has many constructions where only the context, and the interpretation of the translator, can decide which of two meanings was intended. Many times, for example, the translation turns on whether the participle is to be taken as middle or passive. The genitive with the noun of action may be either subjective or objective, and even the faithful American Standard Version does not hesitate to decide which (as in 2 Tim 1.12 and Acts 4.9).

A Greek adverbial participle may have any one of a number of meanings according to the context: condition, concession, time, cause, purpose. Nearly always the English translator (even in the ASV) must decide which. A standard beginning grammar of NT Greek will list numerous uses of the genitive case (“of”) or the accusative (English objective), each with a difference in translation. In each case the translator must decide (i.e. interpret) by the context which use is intended.

Example Please

Let me illustrate the actual impossibility of a literal “word for word” translation by showing that a student who looked up every word in a typical Greek sentence and set one word in English over the Greek, it would look like this:

“And it became in one of the days teaching of him the people in the temple and evangelizing they stood up the high priests and the scribes with the presbyters and they said saying against him, they tell us in such authority these things you do.” (Luke 20.1-2 . . . as literal as you can get).

This is not translation!!!

Or how about one single Greek word . . . “angareuo” used in Matthew 5.41.

There is an awful lot of information in this one little verb. It is “literally” impossible to render this one Greek verb with one English verb. This Greek verb combines at least the following basic semantic components of meaning:

1) burdensome activity;
2) which is compelled;
3) by officers or soldiers of an occupation force; and
4) on non-citizens or persons without status.

There is no equivalent English verb that does all four of these as the Greek does. A so called “literal” rendering of this verb misses the meaning in English by leaving out much of the verg (and the NIV is quite “literal” at this point). A good rendering of this verb might be the Today English Version rendering of the text “if one of the occupation troops forces you to carry his pack . . . ” All that for one Greek verb, and it is accurate.

One final illustration from part of p46 which is pictured above. This portion has our 2 Corinthians 11.33 to the beginning of 12.2. The numbers correspond to the line numbers on p46. For this papyrus and other early NT mss with transcriptions and photographs see Philip W. Comfort & David Barrett The Text of the Earliest New Testament Greek Manuscripts.

1 εν σαργανη εχαλασθην δια του τειχους
in a basket I was lowered through the wall
2 και εξεφυγον τας χειρας αυτου καυχασ
and escaped his hand. To boast
3 θαι δει ου συμφερον μεν ελευσομαι δε
it is necessary (although not expedient indeed), and I will come
4 εις οπτασιας και αποκαλυψεις κυ οιδα
to visions and revelations of the Lord. I know

Our Stoned-Campbell forefathers understood translation principles and practice better than some of their descendants. Moses E. Lard’s comments on H. T. Anderson’s translation marks a fitting conclusion to our discussion to this point …

“The sense of the sacred text should be expressed in the fewest English words that adequately convey it to mind. These words, let me add, should be arranged with no reference to the order of the words of the original. The usages of the English and modes of English thought alone should determine the form the English sentence should take … We should always prefer two or three or even more simple easy words to one learned or unfamiliar one in making a translation” (Moses Lard, “H. T. Anderson’s Translation” Lard’s Quarterly 2 [January 1865], 190, 191)

Lard understood both Greek and English.

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 8th, 2011 at 5:10 pm and is filed under Church History, Exegesis, Hebrew Bible, King James Version. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.