From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Thu Dec 31 1998 - 20:08:50 EST
At 5:10 PM -0600 12/31/98, wross wrote:
>{Carl}
>What would you say about the particularly edifying nature of reading the
>following sentence in Greek--rather than in the KJV?
>
>John 11:35 EDAKRUSEN hO IHSOUS.
>
>{Bill}
>I think it is noteworthy that there are two words for crying in Koine. The
>hapax employed here implies shedding silent tears, as in deep sadness, as
>opposed to the more common word used in the NT "KLAIO" which is not silent.
>
>Just as important is that I have the opportunity to discover any subleties
>of language that are present when they are present because the full range
>the language is there. I'm afraid I'm with Jim's unqualified generalization
>on this one.
>
>That is not to say that one diligently and prayerfully meditating the
>English translations and one skimming the Greek will have equal benefit. The
>English fellow will obviously walk away with more.
I am not going to go any farther with this point than simply to underscore
what my original point really was: I honestly don't believe that anything
subtle or of fundamental importance is gained by the reader who reads John
11:35 in Greek rather than in an English version. The nouns and verbs can
be parsed; one can say something about the aorist tense being used in
EDAKRUSEN rather than an imperfect, or one can say something about the
difference between KLAIW (which really means "cry out" rather than "shed
tears") and DAKRUW--but ultimately it is a simple narrative statement of an
event. There ARE very MANY NT texts wherein the Greek phrasing has a
fundamental bearing on understanding very significant elements of the text;
but if all of the NT were comparable to John 11:35, I certainly wouldn't
urge people to learn Greek in order to digest the meat of it.
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics/Washington University
One Brookings Drive/St. Louis, MO, USA 63130/(314) 935-4018
Home: 7222 Colgate Ave./St. Louis, MO 63130/(314) 726-5649
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu OR cconrad@yancey.main.nc.us
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/
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