>>> In my personal study and recently on the list I have seen reference to
several Greek idioms.
Is there a concise publication of Greek idioms somewhere? If not, then
perhaps some of the more
experienced "Bigger Greeks" have compiled such a list. I think it would be
a valuable tool.
Respectfully,
Kevin Mullins
KPMullins@AOL.com <<<
Someone has already referred to work on "Figures of Speech," which is what
you may be asking about. But may I speak to the larger question of what
are called "IDIOMS" in language-teaching. Students used to be taught, when
studying almost any language other than their own, to memorize "idioms"
which exist in the second language. As I learned more about linguistics,
and came to teach ancient Greek and Hebrew (even Latin one year, mea culpa!)
for decades, I discovered that this is a very misleading way of thinking
about language. What older books almost always meant by an "idiom" was
something which, when translated word-for-word into English either didn't
make sense or made the wrong sense. Hence, one had to learn that words
X-Y-Z in that order didn't mean X-Y-Z in English, but meant something more
like F-J-Q in English.
But the fact is, very little in other languages means the same thing when
put word-for-word into English. Two comical examples would be:
Mark Twain's lovely essay (posted by Jonathan recently on this List
to my delight) translating a little story into English, observing the
"gender" of every German noun as referring to gender-in-the-sense-of-sex.
The scene in "Casablanca" where a German-speaking couple are
happily anticipating getting to the US (in December 1941), and after a few
German sentences, one says: "From now on, we are speaking only in English!"
Then one asks the other the time: "What watch, Liebchen?" The reply is,
"Ten watch." The response to that is, "Such watch!" Anyone knowing
German understands, but also realizes that they discuss time differently in
German than in English. They don't have idioms for it in German; in German
they think about it differently, and talk about it differently.
One of the real reasons for studying ancient Greek is to learn how
they thought about things, especially how they thought DIFFERENTLY about
things, not simply what different thoughts they had about things. This is
what makes translation-as-a-goal a losing goal. Translations of the NT
into English today number in perhaps the multi-hundreds, maybe even more
than a thousand, "I suppose" [allusion to end-of-John, of course!]; we
don't need another, even our own. We need to learn what translation cannot
reveal: How the thinking itself was oriented differently. That is of
course even more true of Hebrew than Greek; but it is surely very true
indeed of the New Testament in Greek.
To know that in English we think of water that moves as "running"
(what a funny way of thinking!), whereas in Greek they thought of it as
"alive," as "living," helps to see why different puns would occur to us
than to the Evangelist John, to whom puns (not funny) were a basic mode of
teaching. We even say we "play with words," though perhaps it isn't always
"playing," but something more serious. (But I correct myself even here,
since I think God is "playing" with the universe and us--not throwing dice,
as Einstein rejected, but glorious, joyful playing. But that's just my
personal theology, a theology I'm not always up to sticking by.)
So of course read Moule's "Idiom Book" -- but don't be midled by
the title, or by the word "idiom."
Edward Hobbs