From: Larry Swain (swainl@calcite.rocky.edu)
Date: Tue Jul 07 1998 - 01:58:29 EDT
It is rather interesting to me that in one breaath he defends his
translation as "literal" and anyone who disagrees with the translation
then of course isn't being literal. At the seame time is this new "word"
or idea deposited "Marshal"....interesting indeed.
A lot of consideration goes into a translation, or should, more than just
the literalaness of the language. For example that the first book of the
Hebrew Bible begins with the words EN ARCH and so does the gospel speaking
of beginning things is just too coincidental for words. Further is the
fact that creation and new creatoin is such an important theme in John
that this certainly must color how we understand the first verse. And of
course if John is as late as many believe, could it be that John is using
the Targumic idea of the Memra of Adonai as the agent of creation?
HMMMM....Finally is a difficult one for students of Greek, but because a
noun is anarthrous does not necessarily mean that it is anarthrous.
That's just a brief outline, but I think there needs to be some pretty
good background work to justify a translation here of "In a beginning"
The other issue you raise regarding Colwell's rule as applied to this
verse and so on has been dealt with on this list before, so before we
recover familiar ground I will check the archives and see what I find
there.
Regards,
Larry Swain
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