"Paul Zellmer" said: > I'd be interested in seeing your source of the warning nature of the > paint. I know of various cultures where graves which are above ground > are painted white as a sign of continued care for the dead. But I > have never run across any work, scholarly or not, that proposes what > you state to be a fact for the first century Jews. In fact, I rather > doubt it, since the characteristic that is emphasized concerning the > tombs is that they are hWRAIOS, "beautiful." The source is a friend of mine who studied Biblical Hebrew in Israel a number of years ago and was therefore (and thereby) exposed to the Hebrew culture. He may (or may not) be correct. That's why I'm asking here: verification. I was sort of hoping Randall Buth would chime in. As far as hWRAIOS goes, I'll offer some caution to not be too simple when moving from Greek to English. This is the danger of a gloss. When English speakers think of `beautiful' they think in terms of `form' and `attractiveness', but that doesn't capture hWRAIOS very well. The Greek words which can be translated `beautiful' (given the context) are KALOS, hWRAIOS, ASTEIOS, KOSMEW, KOSMOS, EUPREPEIA, EUSCHMOSUNH, MEGALOPREPHS, and EUSCHMWN (taken right from Louw and Nida, semantic domain 79:9-15.) Each of these words brings a different slant on beauty: emphasis on `form', `appropriateness', `appearance', `attractiveness', `presentation', etc. So, I think as you've used the word `beautiful' in the above paragraph, you have expressed a different usage than the Greek word actually conveys. If I were back-translating your paragraph I would NOT use hWRAIOS; I would use KOSMOS (cf 1 Pet. 3:3). hWRAIOS only occurs four times in the GNT. Acts 3:2,10 refer to a proper name[1] and that presents its own translation problems. In both Rom. 10:15 and Mat. 23:27 it carries the connotation of `appropriateness' and I think it still carries in each place a hint of `ripeness'; and I don't mean to push etymology too far. If we look at a fruit that beckons us to sink our teeth into it, that fruit is hWRAIOS. I would therefore translate in both places as "utterly appropriate". Unfortunately this fails to convey the nuance of outward appearance, though that is readily ascertained from its interaction with the other words in the context. This translation captures the positive ambiance of the term in Romans and the negative one with poignant irony in Mat. which I think is quite hWRAION. As far as what to translate and what is commentary the line between the two is fuzzy. I'll simply say you want to translate THE source language meaning for the receptor language text WILL convey A meaning. You want A meaning to be as close to THE meaning as possible. And that's NOT simple. --- [1] Was the hWRAIOS gate in Jerusalem the gate somehow associated with the market? Sort of a gate through which `ripe' and therefore `beautiful' fruit and vegetables originally came through? Does anyone know how this gate got its name? --- B-Greek home page: http://metalab.unc.edu/bgreek You are currently subscribed to b-greek as: [jwrobie@mindspring.com] To unsubscribe, forward this message to leave-b-greek-327Q@franklin.oit.unc.edu To subscribe, send a message to subscribe-b-greek@franklin.oit.unc.edu