From: Peter Phillips (p.m.phillips@cliff.shef.ac.uk)
Date: Tue Jan 13 1998 - 03:25:50 EST
Yes...but...there may well have been ambiguities in the original language -
see Wead on John's use of double entendre (although it should be ambiguity
not double entendre because this is simply looking at it all from an
English perspective as you say) and our previous discussions on this in the
recent past.
Pete Phillips
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From: Stevens, Charles C [SMTP:Charles.Stevens@unisys.com]
Sent: 13 January 1998 00:22
To: Submissions, B-Greek
Subject: RE: Ambiguities intentional?
At 3:40PM on 1/12/1997, Andrew Kulikovsky opines:
<<What purpose would the writer have in making his communication
ambiguous and therefore confusing?>>
My opinion: its meaning was unambiguous to native speakers/readers of
Koine at the time that it was written. The ambiguity is in English and
in other languages. A native speaker of Koine Greek, were such
available, could clarify this particular use of the genitive in an
instant.
I've commented before that few and far between are the constructs in one
language that map *exactly* onto constructs in another; the ambiguity is
not in the original language but in attempting to fit the underlying
thoughts and thought patterns into a medium ill-suited to it. I have no
problem with Craig's postulate that the right answer for the speaker of
modern English, barring concrete and unequival evidence to the contrary,
is probably "all of the above".
-Chuck Stevens [SMTP: Charles.Stevens@unisys.com]
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