From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Tue Jun 20 2000 - 19:51:08 EDT
At 7:43 PM -0400 6/20/00, Wayne Akins wrote:
>In studying the GNT of Rom 6:12, I noticed that the translators of most
>versions see the imperative BASILEUETO as a second person singular instead
>of a third person singular. Also, hH hAMARTIA is taken as an accusative
>instead of as a nominative. Do you have any grammatical explanation for
>this rendering?
I think that the English translations are being misunderstood because they
use standard correct English to express the thought that takes a different
construction in correct Greek.
The text: MH OUN BASILEUETW hH hAMARTIA EN TWi QNHTWi SWMATI EIS TO
hUPAKOUEIN TAIS EPIQUMIAIS AUTOU.
We don't really have a way to translate the 3d person imperative directly
into English, so we use "let" as a second person auxiliary: "Do not let
reign ..."
And hH hAMARTIA is indeed nominative in the Greek as the subject of
BASILEUETW should be--despite the fact that in the English translation we
may say that "sin" functions as an accusative/objective case form as object
of "let" and then we take "reign" as a complementary infinitive to "let."
But one must distinguish sharply the grammatical structure of the idiomatic
English required to translate a third-person imperative construction from
the grammatical structure of the Greek original text.
--
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University
Summer: 1647 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu OR cwconrad@ioa.com
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/
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