From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Wed Jul 01 1998 - 07:14:03 EDT
At 3:01 AM -0400 7/01/98, Timo Flink wrote:
>Howdy folks..
>
>One of my friends suggested a complitely new kind of understanding for
>Col 2:16-18. Here's his translation.
>
>>Let no man therefore criticize your eating, drinking, observance of an
>>holyday, the new moon, or of the seventh day Sabbath. Their criticism
>>is a shadow of coming attitudes. Nevertheless, body of Christ, let no
>>man beguile you of your reward . . .
>
>He bases his interpretation to the fact that uncials had no commas etc.
>This hits me badly, but I would like to know is there any justification to
>render the text like that??
>
>Since this seems to be a theology-oriented, simple yes/no will do.
Well, in that case, NO. But I think a response can be made in terms of
grammar without regard to any punctuation. I'll type it out without
punctuation:
MH OUN TIS hUMAS KRINETW EN BRWSEI KAI EN POSEI H EN MEREI hEORTHS H
NEMHNIAS H SABBATWN hA ESTIN SKIA TWN MELLONTWN TO DE SWMA TOU CRISTOU
MHDEIS hUMAS KATABRABREUETW QELWN EN TAPEINOFROSUNHi KAI QRHSKEIAi TWN
AGGELWN hA hEWRAKEN EMBATEUWN ...
For one thing, SWMA TOU CRISTOU cannot be a vocative as suggested in your
friend's version (I cannot imagine an article used with SWMA if it were),
rather it pretty clearly stands as antithetical to the preceding clause, hA
ESTIN SKIA TWN MELLONTWN; moreover the relative pronoun hA cannot refer
back to the verb KRINETW, but can hardly refer to anything other than the
sequence of nouns in the dative, each governed by EN. No language is really
so arbitrary as to be a victim of want of punctuation--punctuation is a
very late invention in the long course of the history (even the KNOWN
history) of languages.
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University
Summer: 1647 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/
--- b-greek home page: http://sunsite.unc.edu/bgreek To post a message to the list, mailto:b-greek@franklin.oit.unc.edu To subscribe, mailto:subscribe-b-greek@franklin.oit.unc.edu To unsubscribe, mailto:unsubscribe-b-greek@franklin.oit.unc.edu?subject=[cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu]
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Sat Apr 20 2002 - 15:39:51 EDT