From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Mon Dec 25 2000 - 11:24:40 EST
At 6:57 AM -0500 12/25/00, Jay Adkins wrote:
>Merry Christmas to All,
>
>In reading the birth announcement narratives of John the Baptist and Jesus
>from Luke chapter 1, I came across the following dilemma. It would seem,
>from the varied response of Gabriel, we can know that Zechariah and Mary
>asked different questions, yet they appear similar. Gabriel struck
>Zechariah dumb, but answered Mary's question. My question is are the two
>questions nearly the same or is there a substantial difference between
>them?
>
>Luke 1:18 KATA TI GNWSOMAI TOUTO
> "How will I know this [for certain]? (NASU)
>Luke 1:34 PWS ESTAI TOUTO
> "How can this be, (NASU)
>
>If they are the same or nearly so, then it would appear that Gabriel's
>responses were due to his ability to discern the motivations of the
>individuals by some other means than their queries. This then becomes a
>hermeneutical question and I will leave it for some other format. I can't
>help but think that there is distinction between the two though, even
>though I am aware that I may be trying to put more emphasis on the exact
>terms then I should. Somehow, 'according to what, am I to know this'
>seems more faithless than does 'how is this.' While those are both overly
>literal phrases, they do serve to point to my uneasiness about the texts
>comparisons. Thank you in advance for any help.
I frankly think that this question is not answerable in terms of what the
Greek text says; I do think I'd opt for a more "literalistic" version than
the "interpretive" versions offered from NASV, although I think they're
accurate and idiomatic enough, i.e. "In terms of what particular thing will
I know this?" and "How will this be?" I think we can only speculate on
whether they are the same question; it seems to me that, in philosophical
terms, Lk 1:18 raises an epistemological question whereas Lk 1:34 raises a
physical/metaphysical/cosmological question--but the entire Platonic corpus
is sufficient to demonstrate that these questions cannot be clearly
differentiated from each other. Both questions seem to refer to the
incomprehensibility of what one has been told in terms of one's current
understanding of "they way things are." But I think the question is
essentially speculative and I don't think we can get beyond the Greek text.
I'd be inclined to say that Luke certainly makes his narratives resonate
with ordinary people's awareness of the difference between the ordinary
phenomena of nature and human interaction and that which doesn't conform to
one's experience of such ordinary phenomena.
Christmas felicitations to all list-members!
--
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
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/
---
B-Greek home page: http://metalab.unc.edu/bgreek
You are currently subscribed to b-greek as: [jwrobie@mindspring.com]
To unsubscribe, forward this message to leave-b-greek-327Q@franklin.oit.unc.edu
To subscribe, send a message to subscribe-b-greek@franklin.oit.unc.edu
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Sat Apr 20 2002 - 15:36:45 EDT