1Cor 8:4

From: Harold R. Holmyard III (hholmyard@ont.com)
Date: Mon May 29 2000 - 14:44:51 EDT


Dear Dmitriy,
     Both translation possibilities for 1 Cor 8:4 that you suggest are
valid grammatically; so it is just a question of which one makes more sense
in English. There were idols; so I agree with Mike that it is better to say
that "an idol is nothing in the world," meaning that it has no value. On
the other hand, it is more natural modern English to say "there is no God
but one" than to say "none is God but one." So I would translate: "we know
that an idol is nothing in the world, and that there is no God but one."

It seems impossible to duplicate the close parallelism of the Greek, but I
think that Mike's translation "and especially" ignores the parallelism in
the verse. The second hOTI depends on OIDAMEN just as the first hOTI does.
I checked about eight translations and they all replicate the parallelism.
Mike is good to draw attention to Deut 6:4, however. The New Living
Translation has: "Well, we all know that an idol is not really a god and
that there is only one God and no other."

                                Yours,
                                Harold





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