Re: OUAI = "DAMN"?

From: TonyProst@aol.com
Date: Mon Sep 14 1998 - 13:20:14 EDT


In a message dated 9/14/98 9:49:28 AM Pacific Daylight Time,
jharper@ix.netcom.com writes:

<< I'm just starting to look at these passages. At first blush, though, I
> don't think that the translation "damned" can be justified, at least not as
> an exclusive meaning of the term. A quick browse makes me think that "woe"
> is a very good translation.
 
 I'm no fan of the JS, but my impression of the Scholars' Version is that they
 are attempting to render the Greek into *idiomatic* English, as if we were
 listening to Jesus preaching today. When was the last time anybody heard the
 words "woe to you" in conversational English? If "damn" doesn't carry the
 sense of the Greek, we must look elsewhere than to "woe" in order to make the
 translation into contemporary idiom, don't you think?
>>

        When was the last time you heard your preacher say "Damn you all!" Perhaps
"You'll be sorry!"

        On the other hand, either Jesus or the writer must be understood to be
speaking (or writing ) in a rhetorical context which would use phraseology
with accepted associations, quasi formulaic.

        To my ears (or eyes) the Jesus Seminar's translation reads like my first pass
through a translation in pencil, where I just put down whatever comes to first
mind, but I later attempt to make felicitous. The style of the JS seems to me
uneven and jarring, the difference between, perhaps, the product of an
inspired committee, like the Authorized Editors, and a merely *hosios*
committee.

Tony Prost

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