Re: Acts 17:28

From: Jonathan Robie (jonathan@texcel.no)
Date: Tue Feb 10 1998 - 22:14:14 EST


At 07:55 PM 2/11/98 -0700, Troy A. Griffitts wrote:
 
>IMHO, being no expert, it seems that the verbs should be consistent thus
>the previously suggested understandings could be:
>
> "In whom we ARE GIVEN LIFE, ARE MOVED, and ARE MADE TO EXIST"
>or
> "FOR whom WE LIVE, MOVE, and HAVE BEING."
 
But the grammatical forms differ - the first and third verbs are active,
the second one (move) is medio-passive, which might be interpreted either
as middle or as passive.

The translations "are given life" and "are made to exist" are just plain
wrong. For those of us who have been convinced by Carl's treatment of
medio-passives, "live, move, and have being" may be an appropriate
translation, but only because "move" is equivalent to the middle "move
(with respect to ourselves)", which is difficult to translate directly into
English. I think that the verb KINEW (move) is used in the sense of "move
about" here.

Perhaps it could be translated:

        "for in him we live, we move, we are."

And if not, someone will correct this soon enough!

Jonathan
___________________________________________________________________________

Jonathan Robie jwrobie@mindspring.com

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