[b-greek] RE: Rev 22:1-2

From: Al & Patty Jacobson (abj@the-bridge.net)
Date: Sat Jan 20 2001 - 15:51:37 EST


Why isn't the most obvious solution to translate PLATEIAS in the manner
suggested by the papyri cited in Moulton and Milligan's Vocabulary of the
Greek New Testament: "public square"? The river runs through a "plaza" or
"public square" and has fruit trees on each side of it. Very nice image,
huh?

Al Jacobson

-----Original Message-----
From: Iver Larsen [mailto:alice-iver_larsen@wycliffe.org]
Sent: Saturday, January 20, 2001 9:30 AM
To: Biblical Greek
Subject: [b-greek] RE: Rev 22:1-2


>
> Harold wrote:
>
> Verse 2 is not simply talking about the river, but it is talking
> about a tree of life that
> seems to be between the street of the city and the river.
>
> [Moon]
>
> You seem to assume that the traditional verse division is correct here.
> But ASV and NET (net bible) take EN MESWi THS PLATEIAS AUTHS to belong
> to 22.1. Both translations take KAI TOU POTAMOU ENTEUQEN KAI EKEIQEN
> to mean "On either side of the river".
>
> I have problems with this approach and with the approach you assume
> as well. I would like to hear from advocates of both approaches.
>
> The problems of ASV and NET.
>
> (1) TOU POTAMOU is taken to modify adverbs ENTEUQEN (from-here)
> and EKEIQEN (from-there). Is it grammatical?
> (2) The translation "on either side of the river" must have taken
> "from-here and from-there of the river" to mean "here and
> there of the river". Basically it ignores QEN in both phrases.
> But on what ground?
>
> The problems of the traditional verse division.
>
> (1) What kind of place does "in the midst of the city's street
> and of the river" ["between the city's street and the river"]
> refer to? Suppose there are a street and a river near the street.
> There seems no reasons for the tree of life to be in the space
> between the street and the river.
>
> (2) How would this approach handle ENTEUQEN KAI EKEIQEN?
>
> Moon
> Moon-Ryul Jung

This is my perspective:

The UBS Translators' Handbook and the majority of Bible translations favour
your
ASV and NET alternative and I would agree with it.

There are strong grammatical reasons to take the first prepositional phrase
in
v. 2 (in the middle of its street) as a constituent of the sentence that
begins
with KAI in v. 1. The main argument is the conjoining word KAI which appears
in
v. 2 after the prepositional phrase. When KAI conjoins two elements they are
at
the same level. It can conjoin words, phrases or clauses/sentences, and in
this
text, the only reasonable suggestion is that it conjoins two sentences. The
Semitic flavour of Revelation with all its sentence initial KAIs supports
this.
(As far as I can see the UBS and Nestle-Aland Greek texts were wrong in
placing
a full stop at the end of v. 2, but I do not know their arguments for such
an
interpretation. As I said above almost all translations, including UBS ones,
disagree.)

Concerning ENTEUQEN KAI EKEIQEN I would take them as substantive locatives
with
a word like "side" or "place" implied. The words "here" and "there" are
deictic
in relation to the speaker as are "this" and "that". "Here" means "this
place
where the speaker is" and "there" means "that place away from speaker".
(This is
universal linguistics, not just Greek grammar.) There is a similar
expression in
John 19:18 (as per Bauer) KAI [ESTAURWSAN] MET' AUTOU ALLOUS DUO ENTEUQEN
KAI
ENTEUQEN - and they crucified together with him two others on this side
(from
here) and on this side (from here). My guess is that John (the author) was
standing in front of the crosses and did not consider one side to be nearer
himself than the other, so in English this would be on either side (or on
both
sides). On the other hand, in Rev. 22, John is standing (in his vision)
beside
the angel on one side of the river, and therefore naturally refers to the
side
he is on as this side (seen from here) and the side he is not on as the
other
side (seen from there.)

Since there is no article in front of XULON ZWHS it is not talking about a
tree
already known, and it is therefore not correct to translate it in English as
"the tree". Rather there is a life-tree on this side of the river and one on
the
other side. The fact that there was only one life-tree in the Garden of Eden
does not allow us to jump to the conclusion that there is only one life-tree
here. There were in fact two special trees in the Garden (apart from all the
ordinary ones.) Gen 2:9. The tree of knowledge of evil and good is not
needed in

the new "Garden" (now a city), so it has been replaced with another tree of
life. The NLT (New Living Tr.) is more accurate than the meaningless ASV and
RSV
when it says: "On each side of the river grew a tree of life", although I
think
it would have been slightly more accurate to say "There was a tree of life
on
this side of the river and one on the other side." If needed, it could be
clarified to "There were two trees of life, one on this side of the river
and
one on the other side."

Iver Larsen
Kolding, Denmark
alice-iver_larsen@wycliffe.org


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