Heb 3:5: Translating the Future Passive Participle

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Ken Litwak
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Heb 3:5: Translating the Future Passive Participle

Post by Ken Litwak »

In Heb 3:5, the last clause reads ὡς θεράπων εἰς μαρτύριον τῶν λαληθησομένων. I've looked in several grammars, e.g., GGBB, and not found a description of or strategy for translating a Future passive participle. Of course, future participles are fairly rare in the NT, so perhaps this is just not that important. I would render the substantive future passive participle "of the things which will be spoken." However, I checked the NASB to see what they did with this and found "of those things which were to be spoken later." The "were" in this rendering does acknowledge that the things that will be spoken have already been spoken, which is doubtless the viewpoint of the text of Hebrews. Still, technically, it is not more accurate to say "will be" rather than "were to be"? Thanks.

Ken
Stephen Carlson
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Re: Heb 3:5: Translating the Future Passive Participle

Post by Stephen Carlson »

Not really. Both the Greek and the English rendering "were to be spoken later" (or "would be spoken later") refer to a future from the perspective of the past Moses. Neither one asserts or denies that the being spoken has or has not yet happened by the writer's present.
Stephen C. Carlson, Ph.D.
Melbourne, Australia
Ken Litwak
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Re: Heb 3:5: Translating the Future Passive Participle

Post by Ken Litwak »

Stephen,

If the translation said "the things that will be spoken," it would mean that, from the point of view of the author of Hebrews, the event of those things to be spoken is in the future from the vantage point of Hebrews. The translation "were to be spoken later" seems to me unambiguously to refer to things being spoken after Moses' time but before the time of the author of Hebrews.

What would you call the English construction in which "which were to be spoken" offers no sense of when the speaking takes place in relation to Moses? Are you aware of where I might find a discussion of the Greek Future Passive participle? My Google searches have not yielded anything useful nor my perusal of some Greek grammars.

Ken
Stephen Carlson
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Re: Heb 3:5: Translating the Future Passive Participle

Post by Stephen Carlson »

Ken Litwak wrote:If the translation said "the things that will be spoken," it would mean that, from the point of view of the author of Hebrews, the event of those things to be spoken is in the future from the vantage point of Hebrews.
Sure. But this is a highly marked construction, as it "violates" the usual English sequence-of-tenses rule.
Ken Litwak wrote:The translation "were to be spoken later" seems to me unambiguously to refer to things being spoken after Moses' time but before the time of the author of Hebrews.
No, not to me at all. To me, it says nothing about the time of Hebrews, only about Moses.
Ken Litwak wrote:What would you call the English construction in which "which were to be spoken" offers no sense of when the speaking takes place in relation to Moses?
I would call that a misunderstanding of the English construction.
Ken Litwak wrote:Are you aware of where I might find a discussion of the Greek Future Passive participle? My Google searches have not yielded anything useful nor my perusal of some Greek grammars.
You can try the usual grammars, like BDF, Smyth, Robertson, etc. But it seems to me that the issue is that you have a different sense of the NASB's English than its translators.
Stephen C. Carlson, Ph.D.
Melbourne, Australia
cwconrad
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Re: Heb 3:5: Translating the Future Passive Participle

Post by cwconrad »

Ken Litwak wrote:In Heb 3:5, the last clause reads ὡς θεράπων εἰς μαρτύριον τῶν λαληθησομένων. I've looked in several grammars, e.g., GGBB, and not found a description of or strategy for translating a Future passive participle. Of course, future participles are fairly rare in the NT, so perhaps this is just not that important. I would render the substantive future passive participle "of the things which will be spoken." However, I checked the NASB to see what they did with this and found "of those things which were to be spoken later." The "were" in this rendering does acknowledge that the things that will be spoken have already been spoken, which is doubtless the viewpoint of the text of Hebrews. Still, technically, it is not more accurate to say "will be" rather than "were to be"?
The question itself and its posting in this subforum seem somewhat strange. It does indeed seem to focus on translation rather than on understanding the Greek as Greek. The phrasing, "description or strategy for translating a Future passive participle," points rather to those more-or-less useless English "equivalents" of individual forms in a paradigm chart; those "equivalents' are useless precisely because they are formulated without any context. I'm reminded of classsrooms where a Latin form like amanda is glossed as "deserving to be loved" or "lovable", or agenda is variously paraphrased as "deserving discussion" or "to be discussed" or "items for discussion" or even -- to put it in a more recent lingo -- "to-do list." There is no abstract "strategy" for translating paradigms of verbs or nouns or adjectives outside of the context with which the forms interact. Furture passive participles are infrequently employed because contexts where they are called for are not common. The context is always going to provide the only information about the intended sense of the future passive participle -- whether the action is something intended, something expected, something desired, something feared, etc., etc. Moreover the action comtemplated as "to be taken" hereafter is always relative to a time of reference, which in this instance is Moses in his own era.
οὔτοι ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς πάντα θεοὶ θνητοῖς ὑπέδειξαν,
ἀλλὰ χρόνῳ ζητέοντες ἐφευρίσκουσιν ἄμεινον. (Xenophanes, Fragment 16)

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
Ken Litwak
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Re: Heb 3:5: Translating the Future Passive Participle

Post by Ken Litwak »

Carl,

Well, I did raise the issue of translation but only to help me to get a handle on this specific type of participle because I am teaching participles (some of them anyway) in an exegesis course as that is a requirement of the course, even though it is not on Greek, and have not yet found an explanation in a grammar, e.g., GGBB, at least not one that provides what I want to know. I was explaining to students in writing what each participle in Hebrews 3:1-5 is doing, what subject it goes with, etc. Perhaps this should be in the forum for teaching Greek, but it's not a simple translation matter. It seems to me it would be translated much like a Fut.pass.ind. So grammatically, is this relatively rare form primarily stylistic rather than really different from a fut.pass.ind. finite verb?

Ken
Barry Hofstetter
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Re: Heb 3:5: Translating the Future Passive Participle

Post by Barry Hofstetter »

Ken Litwak wrote:Carl,

Well, I did raise the issue of translation but only to help me to get a handle on this specific type of participle because I am teaching participles (some of them anyway) in an exegesis course as that is a requirement of the course, even though it is not on Greek, and have not yet found an explanation in a grammar, e.g., GGBB, at least not one that provides what I want to know. I was explaining to students in writing what each participle in Hebrews 3:1-5 is doing, what subject it goes with, etc. Perhaps this should be in the forum for teaching Greek, but it's not a simple translation matter. It seems to me it would be translated much like a Fut.pass.ind. So grammatically, is this relatively rare form primarily stylistic rather than really different from a fut.pass.ind. finite verb?

Ken
It is rare in the NT, and even in classical Greek you can read quite a few pages of your favorite author and not see one. In general, it shows that the action expressed by the participle is future to that of the main verb. In classical Greek, it is sometimes (usually with the adverb ὡς) used to show purpose.
N.E. Barry Hofstetter, M.A., Th.M.
Ph.D. Student U of FL
Instructor of Latin
Jack M. Barrack Hebrew Academy
καὶ σὺ τὸ σὸν ποιήσεις κἀγὼ τὸ ἐμόν. ἆρον τὸ σὸν καὶ ὕπαγε.
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