From: yochanan bitan-buth (ButhFam@compuserve.com)
Date: Thu Jun 29 2000 - 10:18:33 EDT
michael egrapsen:
>>(Buth) Between Greek and Hebrew, Greek is the more distinctly aspectual
>> language. That becomes so clear when dealing with Semitisms in the
>> Gospels or with the LXX and MT.
>Would you be so kind and give us weanies an example or two.
Sure.
1. Every imperative and infinitive in the Hebrew Bible must be evaluated
by Greek translators as to whether to encode in Greek as 'in-process' or as
'simple'. thus, the Hebrew writer did not need to specify aspects in these
situations but the Greek translator must continually make an additional
choice. Thus, the Greek ends up concerned about aspect where the Hebrew
writer was pretty much oblivious.
2. Hebrew narrative is built around the 'vav hahippux'. This generates an
inordinate number of aorist indicatives in Greek translation. A translaotr
must cross a threshhold and use extra processing energy in order to
consciously shift over to a Greek imperfect or a Greek perfect. They did
these latter things, but at a frequency that is less than natural Greek due
to the 'threshhold' concept just mentioned.
That same 'threshhold' is why there are so many 'kai' in LXX, Gospels and
1Acts while natural Greek prefers 'de'. the Hebrew vav "and" can be used at
all levels like Greek 'kai' and so gets 'chosen' without thinking as a
default, while the de is restricted to clause-level in Greek and requires a
little extra processing energy by the translator.
ERRWSO
Randall Buth
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