From: Clwinbery@aol.com
Date: Sun May 20 2001 - 21:27:27 EDT
In a message dated 5/20/01 2:08:58 PM, Numberup@worldnet.att.net writes:
>But the English word "should," which derives from an Old English term that
>meant "was
>obliged to; ought to," also expresses obligation.
>
>And I thought that an expression like Jakobson's "traddutore traditore"
>("the
>translator is a traitor [to the original]") applied generally, not just
>to literal
>translations.
>
>Solomon Landers
Solomon, the subjunctive mood in Greek has to be translated in keeping with
the function that it has in the context, in a main clause or in a subordinate
clause. For instance as in a subordinate clause with hINA, it can be used to
show indirect discourse. In the temptation account in Matthew we see
EIPE hINA hOI LIQOI hOUTOI ARTOI GENWNTAI.
"Tell these stones to become bread."
In that situation the infinitive in English conveys the same idea as the hINA
clause in the Greek. There are over 600 occurrances of hINA in the GNT. Only
15 of them occur with the future indicative. In these occurrances the future
seems to function exactly the same as the subjunctive functions in similar
situations. A translation that uses some such translations as "should,"
"would," "might," etc. for every occurrance of the subjunctive surely will be
a distortion of the meaning in the original. Context, context, context, never
forget about context. Never. It makes a lot of difference when trying to make
sense of anything in written language. To think that it is necessary to
translate the same morphology the exact same way in every instance was
refuted by the KJV editors who wrote the original preface. Its called "word
idolatry."
Carlton Winbery
LA College
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