From: Stephen C. Carlson (scarlson@mindspring.com)
Date: Thu May 06 1999 - 00:41:17 EDT
At 11:19 AM 5/5/99 -0700, atombomb@sirius.com wrote:
>Mark Goodacre wrote:
>> I would be grateful for any help on the translation of the following:
>>
>> Luke 11.28: MENOUN MAKARIOI hOI AKOUONTES TON LOGON TOU QEOU KAI FULASSONTES.
>
>I think a translation as positive or affirmative "indeed" would be far
>more in keeping with the general thought of St Luke than a disjunctive
>"rather" (as we tend to read it, really out of an anti-Catholic polemic):
Interestingly, two common Roman Catholic translations, the Rheims Bible
and the New American Bible, both render MENOUN with "rather" as in "Yea
rather" and "Rather" respectively. Indeed, the "Yea rather" of the
Rheims agrees with the Authorized (KJV).
I suppose that both MENOUN and English "rather" are ambiguous, expressing
both affirmative and negative (or at least contrastive) meanings, depending
on the context. The translations have chosen different ways to handle this:
the KJV and the Rheims resolve MENOUN affirmatively ("Yea rather, blessed ..."),
the NAB ambiguously ("Rather, blessed are thou..), and the leading modern
Protestant versions contrastively ("On the contrary, blessed ..." NASB;
"Blessed rather ..." NIV, NRSV, Amplified). My translational preference is
for the translation that is just as ambiguous as the source text, but my
exegetical preference is for the affirmative meaning, as argued by Mark and
John.
Stephen Carlson
-- Stephen C. Carlson mailto:scarlson@mindspring.com Synoptic Problem Home Page http://www.mindspring.com/~scarlson/synopt/ "Poetry speaks of aspirations, and songs chant the words." Shujing 2.35--- B-Greek home page: http://sunsite.unc.edu/bgreek You are currently subscribed to b-greek as: [cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu] To unsubscribe, forward this message to leave-b-greek-329W@franklin.oit.unc.edu To subscribe, send a message to subscribe-b-greek@franklin.oit.unc.edu
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