Re: why isn't BAPTIZW translated?

James H. Vellenga (jhv0@viewlogic.com)
Wed, 18 Sep 96 08:46:10 EDT

> From: DWILKINS@ucrac1.ucr.edu
>
> My usual apologies for being late to pick up this thread. My experience has
> been that there are several reasons for such transliterations. One is simply
> traditional, although a tradition probably has a reason originally behind it.
> Certainly translating BAPTIZW as "immerse" would turn up the heat again--
> there have been many old works written on this issue from different denomi-
> national perspectives. There also has to be a good reason to buck well-
> established traditions, a "hill to die on" if you will, and Bible trans-
> lations that no one buys or uses because of the translation's iconoclastic
> tendencies are self-destructive...

Hmmm. Don's last-quoted sentence has the ring of truth to it. This could
be advanced as yet another reason for learning Greek -- apropos of
at least a couple of threads on this list over the past year -- so
that in understanding the NT, one isn't tied down by the compromises
that commercially viable translations have to make. And
for those of us who aren't qualified as "big Greeks," it also offers
us an incentive to do personalized provisional translations unless and
until we can read the Greek in its own terms.

Regards,
Jim V.

James H. Vellenga | jvellenga@viewlogic.com
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