Re: Correct Translation of παρουσία
Posted: September 29th, 2014, 8:45 am
In all honesty Stephen, if this works for you, fine, but seems to me to be unduly complicated. That's not how we do it in our language. We know the range of meaning in the word, and we don't confuse "The CEO is running the company" with "The CEO is running a race." This is how speakers of all languages know the meaning/usage of a word that has a semantic range.Stephen Hughes wrote:Rather than heading into the subjective unknown with that, let me suggest a method for doing it...Barry Hofstetter wrote:I suggest looking up each of the instances and asking the question "which usage sounds better in this context?"
Further to what I said 12 months ago about this noun (I would now add the words ἀποχωρεῖν / ἀποχώρησις to that discussion, and I would also raise the topic of whether ἄφιξις (cf. ἀφικνέομαι "to reach", "to arrive") in Acts 20:29 Ἐγὼ γὰρ οἶδα τοῦτο, ὅτι εἰσελεύσονται μετὰ τὴν ἄφιξίν μου λύκοι βαρεῖς εἰς ὑμᾶς, μὴ φειδόμενοι τοῦ ποιμνίου· means "departure" or "arrival", if I had known then what I know now). Here, I will be considering the meaning (place it functions in the language) of παρουσία from a different perspective than I did last year.
To preempt what I will say here, I think that it is a question of whether the action can be repeated or not.
Let me first introduce a (vaguely) analogous situation to this, which is the so-called third form of the verb "to go" in English. Most books list it as; go - went - have gone, but that is not the whole story, go to - went to - have been to is also possible. The difference is whether the person returned or not. In a tense that means where the action is repeated, such as "I go to school every day.", then the third form of the verb is "I been to school every day" (implying he returned), but in another case, such as "He will go home next week." the corresponding third form of the verb is "He has gone home." (without specifying his return).
The implications of the verb form for whether the action is complete or on-going are not made so clear in English as they are in Greek, but in this case we need to think about that issue when choosing the correct third form to use.
In Greek, παρουσία is a noun not a verbal tense, but it a noun derived from a verb. In each situation where it is used, try to decide whether it is derived from a form of the verb that is repeatable, such as the present or imperfect, in which case the corresponding noun would be short term, such as "arrival" (without specifying whether he stayed on), OR from a from of the verb which is non-repeatable such as the aorist in which case the corresponding noun would be long term, such as "presence" (implying he stayed on).
In other words, rephrase each instance verbally, and decide if it is an on-going or momentary action.