From: Kenneth Litwak (kenneth@sybase.com)
Date: Sun Dec 17 1995 - 20:39:42 EST
I spent time this weekend translating Matt 5 and came across a couple
of issues in the Beattitudes I'd like to ask about, partly because
school's out and I don't have a detailed commentary on the Greek of
Matthew avaiable. In several beattidues, autoi appears. Normally,
I would translate autoi with a verb as emphatic, "they themselves",
but I'm not aware of any translation which does so. Why not? Also,
several verses use autwn with a form of eimi. I'm a little puzzled
about precisely how to understand this construction. Eimi
requires a nominative subject and object. If I take the verb as
including the subject, I have something like "The kingdom of God
it is of them/for them/something". Autwn can't be the subject or object
because it's genitive. Clearly, however, it seems to me that
translations such as "theirs is the kingdom of God" are imprecise at
the very least. How should this be rendered if we are going for
literal accuracy? Thanks.
Ken Litwak
GTU
Bezerkley, CA
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