THE BIBLE: ITS INTERPRETATION
AND ITS TRANSLATIONS
© 2000-2002 by
Orchid Land Publications
[updated 20030705]
SEE R 280 FOR OTHER PAGES ON THE BIBLE OR SCRIPTURE
Everything in Orthodoxy goes back to and in some way stems from the Holy Bible (as canonized by the Orthodox Church) as interpreted by the consentient holy tradition. Is it open to question that native-speakers of Greek had a better sense of the Greek Bible's meaning than those who have known it only in translation?
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IF YOU
ARE NEW TO THE BIBLE, DON'T FAIL TO READ |
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SEE
HERE (AS WELL AS BELOW) FOR THE REFORMATION TENET |
Two problems affect individualist interpretation (aside from 2 Pet. 1:20), and specifically those the
self-avowed literalist variety: Cultural anachronism and other
defects in the background of the reader; and arbitrary decisions over what is
literal and what is metaphorical. The Bible can be infallible only
insofar as its compiler--the agent that selected from among the many books
contending for a place in the canon those to be included and those to be
excluded--was infallible. It requires an infallible judge to
determine what is infallible; Protestants who claim to know that the Bible is
infallible (whether on the basis of its internal claims or otherwise) are in
effect claiming that they themselves are infallible. The complier and
ratifier of the canon (in the latter fourth century, a time when the Creed was
also finalized) was the Orthodox Church. Luther viewed the matter
differently. Leaving out of consideration such Old Testament books as
the Orthodox treat as deuterocanonical, Luther, in his translation of the New
Testament, placed at the end--in a sort of deuterocanonical or apocryphal
appendix --several books he rejected from full canonicity because they disagreed
with his theology; he quite strongly rejected James. Not even a pope has
gone that far. Luther also tendentiously re-edited Rom. 3:28 to make it
agree with his theology. Unless he claimed the infallibility of a
pope, Luther's canon and his textual alteration merely express his personal,
plainly biased and non-objective opinion. The same holds true of
individual canonizers, text critics, and exegetes today: Unless they are
infallible, their conclusions are very parlous. The contrasting views,
Orthodoxy (on the traditional right) vs. individualism (on the radical left:
Evangelical Fundamentalism and Liberalism), represent opposite extremes of the
spectrum found in today's Christianity.
The following represent the possibilities of any given passage in the
traditional Bible:
--it is not in Scripture but a necessary implicate of or deduction from what is
in Scripture
--it is not in Scripture but necessary to avoid interpretations contrary to the
import of Scripture
--it is not in Scripture but not contrary to it and indeed compatible with it
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A general linguistic point is that languages
categorize reality differently. German,
e.g., has got two kinds of “knowing”—knowing things and knowing
people. Trying to make such
a distinction in English (which “neutralizes”—i.e. fails to
make—the distinction) when translating German is not useful.
One could cite languages in which “foot” and “leg” or
“strike” and “kick” are not distinguished in the English manner
as well as languages in which distinctions are made that English
“neutralizes.” The translator should observe the uses of the target
language unless there is a special situation requiring the bringing out
of a distinction in the original language.
This is true in the grammatical realm as well as in the lexical
realm. A problem arises
when the grammar of another language makes a distinction ignored in
English—or else made in English only when need to highlight a
particular point. English
can distinguish past sat from progressive was sitting,
from habitual used to sit, and from characteristic would sit,
not to speak of has sat, has been sitting, had sat, had been
sitting. (Incidentally, English has got nine posterior modalities;
see Bailey, Essays on time-based linguistic analysis, Oxford
University Press [1996]; see “posterior” in the Index.
English can makes distinctions in past-posterior and
present-posterior time that other languages cannot make, though the
system breaks down somewhat with could and would.)
Just because a form in Greek or Latin is stated in a continuous
mode does not require making the same distinction in English unless a
particular point is to be made. And
note that English and the Western Romance languages cannot say was
standing or used to stand for a continuous past action when
no locational dixis is present. Thus,
“Troy was standing/ used to stand 600 years,” is un-English.
That Greek has continuous and perfective aspects that are obligatory-—forced on the writer whether they matter or not does not mean that a good English translation must use them when they are irrelevant and hence “neutralized” or ignored (not forced on a writer) in English. We should translate them only when they make a difference. Even then, we would not translate the Greek equivalent of “Troy was standing 600 years” as such. |
A Bible translation lacking the following three qualities (CLICK HERE FOR THE ONLY ONE THAT AS OF THIS WRITING IS TO BE RECOMMENDED) should be handled with care:
1) The Greek
Bible should be used, though Hebrew variants should be noted in the Old
Testament.
| The
opening verses of Genesis in Hebrew
say that the newly created cosmos as tohu and vohu, both of which are
nouns meaning “emptiness”; the translation would be “void
and empty” or "utterly and completely empty."
The
LXX
says “invisible and unformed, unfurnished.”
Verse 2 goes on to say that darkness (lack of light—or energy)
was on the face of the empty deep (tehom) or abyss. Then it says
that God's Spirit was moving gently on the face of hammayim "the
waters"—perhaps mist in the writer’s mind, perhaps interpretable
as “waves [of energy].” Verse 3 next speaks of the
creation of light. Verse 7 tells of God's dividing light and
dark as day and night. CLICK
HERE for “dark matter.” |
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Experts
are able to explain some mistranslations of Hebrew in the LXX;
cf. phylé or pyqle in Ruth 3:11. See SVTQ 42, no. 42 (1999), p. 351, unless one
should wish to claim that the Hebrew cannot be used to help interpret
the canonical LXX.
To make sense of an iconsistent chronology that one assumes is there
for future generations to interpret in harmony with the energy of
Orthodox onotology and the different but not conflicting sense of
energy in modern science, what can the word for “waters” mean in
verse 3? (Note that water
in many languages naturally designates other fluids or liquids
besides its basic reference to H2O—even a mist, as may be
probable in verse 7.) What
was the Spirit “hovering, moving” over when there was no water yet
created in the cosmos? No doubt many interpretations—including
the most far-fetched metaphors—can be imposed on the text, but waves
of energy seems as reasonable as any other.
For the Greek-Bible view of being is that energy is not some
thing but rather something that which makes some dyqnamis
or potential (the author's “mist”?) into some actuality or
reality—e.g. the cosmos, heaven and earth. Other
interpretations that makes sense of the passaage are possible, but I
prefer the one that jibes with Orthodox ontology, esp. when it does
not blatantly conflict with modern science—whose idea of creation is
that of an explosion of energy that (by millions of years—St. Vasil's æons)
preceded visible, tangible entities. That said, science is not static but is constantly plunging ahead. The latest findings suggest that the stars were formed much sooner after the Big Bang ('ormé?) than was formerly postulated. |
| It defies reason and commonsense to
maintain, in the Western manner, that a nature can sin or has sinned;
only individuals can sin. Where the Reformers allow guilt to be
inherited—by imputation or otherwise—and merits [of Christ or of
the Saints] to be transferred by, the East rejects inherited guilt and
inherited merit: We share in Christ's goodness not by imputation
and nothing more, but ontologically—including our physically partaking
of His Body
and Blood in the most holy eucharistic Mysteries.
Those who speak of Christ’s Body’s being spiritual
present in the great Mystery don’t know the difference between body
and spirit. The Calvinist
idea of a virtual presence in a communicant with proper subjective
faith when the ceremony is accompanied by a proper sermon has
drawbacks that hardly require pointing out. |
2) The words having to with "energy" (and "synergy") should be translated as such; without this, the whole thought world of the New Testament and the thought world of Eastern Orthodoxy gets obscured and indeed deprived of one of its most elemental cognitive building-blocks. (CLICK HERE.) When LOGOS refers to the Creator of all that is, it should not be translated as "Word" (CLICK HERE). The word should either be left untranslated or possibly glossed as "Creator-Reason"; or else the rendering should be "Rational Principle" ("of the cosmos" or "of order in the cosmos"; note that the cosmos is orderly and investigable by reason, not "wordy!"). (The lógoi of St. Maximos the Confessor, not in the Bible, are the raisons d'être of things. It can be argued that oikonomía, a non-Biblical term used to speak of Biblical ideas, should be "economy" rather than "dispensation. It refers to created being--the part of being created by the LOGOS according to John 1:1,3 and a few passages in the Pauline Letters.)
3) Orthodox doctrine (not skimping the all-holy Theotokos, especially in Luke 1) should be indicated wherever relevant. A non-ontological (in fact, juridical) view of the Fall and Salvation does not have to exalt the Theotókos the way the Eastern ontological view does.
4) Every verse quoted or alluded to in the entire ritual of Orthodoxy should be specially referenced as such; the reference should say where it is cited in which prayer. There may be verses cited too often to reference in detail; in such instances, a few important prayers could be referenced, with "and often elsewhere" added.
5) Clear, yet dignified, modern English; the best model is the 1611 version minus archaic grammar, vocabulary, and idiomatic expressions, provided mistranslations of LOGOS and enéryeia are not included, especially in crucial verses like Philp. 2:13. (An unworthy sample can be seen by CLICKING HERE.)
SEE HERE ON ANCIENT CULTURE AND INDIVIDUAL INTERPRETATION
SEE HERE FOR AN IMPORTANT ASPECT OF TRANSLATION
Whatever
gets done should avoid those misleading Western distortions that fail to
understand the energy words in the original Greek New Testament and confuse the
neuter -ma verbal nouns (expressing the results of activities--of
creating, assimilatimg, etc.) with the NT -sis
feminines standing for the related activities (e.g. creating, assimilating).
They should, in short, avoid current Western translations that misrender
"assimilation" (Gen. 1:26) as "likeness" and call Salvation
(St. Paul's "new creation") a "new creature." The
scholarship should be a model for future translations into other languages and
for Orthodox prayer books and other writings in English, which currently
disregard such niceties on the understandable but unfortunate grounds that the
first Orthodox ecclesiastical leaders in the New World were not native-speakers
of English and simply accepted what was (mis-)established in English by Western
Christians.
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A
friend has referred me to your site.
I would like to mention two points from my perspective.
1. When enérgeia "energy" and its corresponding verb and adjective are properly translated in the New Testament, the verses in which the terms are found do not sound at all like the English translations available. One illustration: [Philp. 2:13] "For it is God [Who is] energizing in you all both to will and to energize for the sake of [His] being pleased." This view of Grace gives a whole new slant on the relation of works to Grace. It is often the same in almost thirty other verses. In Hellenistic Greek (cf. the Abbot-Smith A MANUAL GREEK LEXICON OF THE NT, under enérgeia), energy was related to "dynamis" as "actualization" is related to "potential." (See Aristotle's Physics and Metaphysics, ad loc.) 2. The
popular NIV version often (not always) translates Greek sárx
"flesh" as "our sinful nature."
Note: (a) Natures
cannot sin or be sinful, only people can do or be that.
(b) "Sinful flesh" is a Gnostic idea condemned as a
heresy from the beginning (almost 2000 years ago) till now.
When the NT speaks of "flesh of 'amartía, and the
Greek word 'amartía is translated as "sin," that is
usually an error. 'Amartía
is usually not "a sin" (Greek had a word for that--'amártema).
'Amartía meant a "sin-prone condition" of
alienation from God's Energies (Grace), resulting from Adam's Fall.
[Note that guilt (a moral thing) cannot be transmitted
phyusically, but a condition like mortality can be.
On 'amartía, see the unabridged Oxford Greek-English
Lexicon, ed. Liddell & Scott.] In the plural, as in Ps. 50 (in
Greek) or 51 (in English), 'Amartíai meant "sins."
The Orthodox New Testament 2d
ed. (SEE BELOW) translates the energy terms
correctly. This version
does not confuse Greek "energy" formations like the words
for "Assimilation" and "creating" (having a
distinctive ending in Greek) with "result-of-energization"
formations (also with their distinctive ending) meaning
"likeness" and "creature."
Contrast the errors in some translations of Gen. 1:26, 2 Cor.
5:17, Gal. 6:15.
Energy is a basic way of understanding reality in Greek thinking;
it is not so in Western Christianity (though it is in contemporary science):
Think of the way "evolution" is treated by the ancient
Christians (St. Basil, St. Gregory of Nyssa) writing in Greek vs.
today's Christians writing in English!! in
Christ our true God, |
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Note that the oldest examples of the Greek or Septuagint (LXX) Old Testament are about 1170 years older than the oldest dated Hebrew manuscripts; where they differ (e.g. Isa. 7:14 with the Rabbinic change of "virgin" to "young woman" in the Hebrew text obviously meant to slant the text against a Christian interpretation ), the Dead Sea Scrolls (ca. two centuries later than the LXX) are said to confirm the LXX rather than existing Hebrew texts. (It would be interesting to check Ps. 17:15, which in the Hebrew text does not agree with the corresponding Ps. 16:15 of the Septuagint.) With only a rare exception or so, citations of the Old Testament in the New Testament are from the LXX. Some versions (e.g. Slavonic) include Ps. 151. |
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Despite the antiquity of the LXX, it did occasionally misread the letters of the Hebrew alphabet. See M. J. Streett, "The necessity of Hebrew in the translation of an Orthodox Old Testa- ment Canon" (St. Vladimir's theological quarterly [vol. 42 (1999), particularly pp. 351f]). For a comparative view of the many differences in Orthodox, Latin, and Protestant Old Testaments, CLICK HERE. |
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The following deuterocanonical books are included; the information about the Old Testament Apocrypha given here has been provided on the Internet by Fr. Allyne Smith and T. R. Valentine: 1 Esdras The last-named book includes the following items that are not found in
the Apocrypha of the 1611 Bible: "Daniel and Susanna"
and "Daniel, Bel, and the Snake." The "Song of the
three youths" (from Daniel) is found, in the Apocrypha, in the 1611
Bible. A Septuagint translated by L. C. L. Brenton with
Greek and English in parallel columns is available columns is available
from Hendrickson Publishers. It should be noted that 1-2 Kings = 1611 1-2 Samuel; 3-4 Kings = 1611 1-2 Kings; 1-2 Left-overs = 1611 1-2 Chronicles; 2 Esdras = 1611 Ezra; see further above. The Slavonic Bible includes 2 Esdras (= Greek 1 Esdras) and 3 Esdras (= 2 Esdras in Greek MSS but not included in Greek Bible) as well as the following books absent in the Greek LXX: Prayer of Manasseh, Psalm 151, and 3 Maccabees. Appended in the Greek LXX is 4 Maccabees. The Ethiopians have an even larger Old Testament. Absent in the Latin Apocrypha are 1-2 Esdras, the Prayer of Manasseh, Psalm 151, and 3-4 Maccabees. |
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The New Testament (canonized in the latter fourth century) is fairly uniform in Christianity, with the exception of Luther's translation. Luther placed the six or so books that he disdained (because they didn't seem to agree with his theology) in a sort of deuterocanonical appendix at the end of the New Testament; following 1-2 Peter and 1-2-3 John, he placed: Hebrews, James, Jude, and the Apocalypse. The Apocalypse was included in the Orthodox Canon only at the last moment, so to speak; it is therefore not part of the lections read at Orthodox services, which were established earlier on. |
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The canonical Orthodox Bible is the Greek Septuagint Old Testament and the Byzantine textual tradition of the new; if your translation is Orthodox, it should agree with these canonical writings. Another way to check the Orthodoxy of your Bible is to check whether verses with enéryeia "energy" or the corresponding verb, energeín "energize," are properly translated. For example, check how it translates Philp. 2:14; it should say, "For it is God energizing in you all both to will and to energize for the same of pleasing Him" or words having this sense of the words just used. If it changes (what should be) "energize" to "work" or "act" or "operate," you can judge for yourself how distortedly the sense comes across, how the true meaning of the verse gets side-stepped in favor of Western ideas that are anything but "energetic." |
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You may have a Gnostic translation of the Bible, or a truncated version
lacking books canonized (along with the Creed) by the Church in the
latter fourth century. To see if your translation is a
Gnostic one, check whether it Gnostically translates sárx
"flesh" as "sinful nature" (or similar Gnostic
renderings) in Rom. 7:5,18, Gal. 5:24, and other places. Since
natures cannot sin, and since the idea that nature is evil or sinful is
a purely Gnostic heresy (and certainly not part of the Greek New
Testament), you can judge for yourself. At least one widely-used
Evangelical translation will be ruled heterodox with this test. |
The 1611 Bible of course included some of the Apocrypha. The NKJV comes closer to the handed-down Byzantine text than uninspired modern texts created by Bible critics. (Note that the oldest Hebrew texts of the Old Testament are not as old as the LXX Greek translation, some of whose important differences with the extant and clearly later Hebrew text are corroborated by the Dead Sea scrolls that were written near the time of Jesus.) Problems with the main version lie in theologically important particulars. A few may be adverted to here. In Luke 1:43, St. Elizabeth should call the Theotokos the "Mother of God," since "my Lord" was the way speakers of Hebrew and Aramaic pronounced God's name in the context in question; if "Mother of my Lord" is literally translated, a note should clarify the matter. LOGOS (at the beginning of John's Gospel) is ludicrously translated as "Word" in English (and Slavonic) Bibles; the renown scholar, H. A. Wolfson has shown that the Creator-Logos here meant for St. John the Theologian just what Jesus's contemporary Philo meant by it: The Rational Principle of order in the cosmos--or just Reason. (This is complemented by "Wisdom of God" [Theoû Sophía--where wisdom is practical reason] in other parts of the New Testament; of course, Word and Wisdom do not complement each other in any way.) The words for "energy" and "energize" should not be mistranslated, and sárx "flesh" should not be Gnostically (and therefore heretically) rendered; see the preceding frames. Mistranslating Philp. 2:13 yields a distorted understanding of how Grace and good works go together in a believer; the verse implies anything but a conflict of Grace with that kind of good work that Christ energizes a willing believer to perform--a conflict that lies at the basis of Western and especially Reformation theology.
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The Latins mistranslation of Rom. 5:12--having the verse ending with et per peccatum mors, et ita in omnes homines mors pertransiit, in quo omnes peccaverunt ("and through sin death, and thus did death spread into all humans, IN whom [i.e. Adam, referred to at the beginning of the verse as the "one human" in whom sin began] all sinned." Augustine championed the idea of all humans' having sinned "in Adam," as being "in Adam's loins," against the Pelagians. But the Greek of Rom. 5:12 ends thus: "and thus did death spread to all humans, for which [cause] all have fallen into sinning." Yet, the Bible clearly repudiates the idea of transferable guilt (and by implication, merit); see Dt. 24:16 (quoted twice later in the historical books of the Old Testament) as well as Gal. 6:5 in the New Testament. In Orthodoxy, newborn infants (including of course the sinless Mother of God) are not guilty of Adam's trespasses. Only physical defects, not moral ones, can be physically inherited "by natural generation"! |
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There
are many non-traditionalists (on the left-wing or
(despite 1 Pet. 1:20--which forbids private individualistic interpretation--and
Col. 2:23--which forbids self-invented worship) individualist extreme of the Christian spectrum, and indeed on the
Fundamentalist
rather than the Liberal side, or version, of that end of the spectrum) who claim
to believe the Bible literally, but when you show them John 6:53,54 and many
other passages that traditionalists accept with no problem, you will find
it not to be so. For they will explain the verses Gnostically (pseudospiritually)
or in some other NON-literal way that causes the kosher objection (Jews are forbidden to
consume blood) in verses 52 and 56 to lose its point. |
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Modern Biblical
criticism comes out a paradigm alien to the time of Jesus and the Apostles
except for its Gnostic emphasis on spirituality in opposition to matter
("sacraments" and bodily resurrection) with no Angels or demons,
nothing very supernatural, etc. The paradigm also has no idea of time
and maturation--the idea that a writer of the opening verses of Genesis
could, with no knowledge of modern science, still be guided to write about
things that centuries later would be amenable to an energy interpretation
(e.g. the waves or waters that existed before created light or water
were made) or an interpretation of evolution (each "day" being, as
St. Vasil said, an eon of unknown duration), and even something amenable to
a "Big Ban" interpretation (cf. Aristotle's hormé
"impulse"). The critics' method is to impute their paradigm to Jesus and then claim that all things written about what He said--and his driving demons out of those possessed--were interpolated into Scripture by his disciples and later writers. After this unconvincing juggling of ideas, the next step was to remove from Scripture all such notions (now regarded as spurious) and bring Jesus into the purely "spiritual" paradigm of their religious views. This phoniness should be immediately apparent: Deceived by thinking the axioms of their paradigms are verifiable truths, they offer us a Bible full of spurious interpolations, which having been excised, leaves a Bible consisting of only a few modern sentiments. Why they want such a Bible is not very intelligble. But it shows where individualist interpretations can lead. After all, the Evangelicals who regard every word as infallible and to be interpreted literally, embrace non-literal interpretations of many Biblical passages (SEE HERE & HERE). |
The reader should realize that, while the Orthodox Study Bible recently published has many valuable features, it is not without its problems. It uses the NKJV version, i.e. without retaining LOGOS for the Creator, God the Son; and it of course fails to render the "energy" words of the Greek appropriately in English. While this volume has been put together under the supervision of an Overview Committee of hierarchs, it has been criticized (CLICK HERE & HERE for lengthy reviews) for inadequate attention to the a.-h. Theotokos and monasticism, for failing to use the Byzantine text itself and for not arranging the Psalms in the traditional kathismata, for omitting references to Patristic uses of many passages, and for failing to note the liturgical uses of many passages in Orthodox ritual. It has additionally been critiqued for its portrayal of holy Orthodoxy in its article, "Introducing the Orthodox Church," and in appendant articles on the Sermon on the Mount, Parables, Christology, the Mysteries, "Justification by faith," "'Works' in Paul's writings," "Deification" [sic], etc. (There is nothing listed in the Table of Contents on the a.-h. Trinity or the holy tradition!) One can of course make good use of this Bible--its Lectionary, Maps, Glossary, and Concordance--without reading the articles. Other criticisms have to do with its inclusion of textual decisions of non-Orthodox scholars; the Psalter's being more Protestant than Orthodox in certain respects; the mostly "simplistic and shallow" comments on the text; failure to draw on the Fathers or sufficiently on the prayers of the Church; having emphases that lend it an air of being more appropriate to Protestant inquirers; and various less portentous errors. Some of the icons in the edition under scrutiny have been criticized as exhibiting images not in accord with Orthodox iconography.
| Five serious English mistranslations of the Greek Bible and Greek Patristic Literature frequently encountered (in addition to others mentioned on this page). |
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1. Translating LOGOS
(the Creator) cacodoxically and ludicrously as "Word"; see comments
above. 2. Mistranslating enérgeia "energy" as "(in-)working" and the like; energeîn as "work" and the like ("effect[uate]" is not entirely off-base]; and the corresponding adjectives as "active" or "operative." They should be rendered as "energy, energize," and "energetic" (or sometimes "effective"). 3. Rendering 'omoíosis "assimilation" as though it were 'omoíoma "likeness, similarity, image, icon" confuses cause and result and completely misunderstands the pairing of feminine energetic (deverbative) nouns ending in -sis (-tis after -s-) with neuter non-energetic correlates (which may indicate the result of an energization). The 'omoíosis Theõ is a well-known concept in ancient Greek philosophical literature. Similar comments for rendering ktísis (a new creating) as "creature" (which would be ktísma). 4. Théosis "Divinization" (partaking of the uncreated Energies of God) is misrendered as though it were apothéosis "Deification" (partaking of the uncreated Essenceof God--a heresy in Orthodox eyes) does not occur as such in the New Testament, but is often used in connnectionwith 2 Pet. 1:4. 5. Hebrew, Greek, and Latin--but not the Romance languages and English--distinguish words for "(member of the) human race" and "adult man." English "man" should not be used to render the former sense (Hebrew 'adam "Adam,", Greek ánthropos, Latin homo). Often "humanity," "human being," or "person" is suitable. The foregoing omits silly renderings like "Symbol of Faith" for Sýmvolon Písteos "Standard of Belief" and so on, which are found in prayer books. (The Creed is not the "symbol" of anything!) Another infelicitous rendering is "Jesus Lover of men/man" for "Jesus the One Who cherishes human beings" [or "humanity"]. Note that cherish is the verb that is cognate with Latin caritas "love." |
The reader can obtain Blessed Theophylact's multi-volume Explanation--a verse-by-verse commentary, distilling many Patristic commentaries on the Bible--from: Chrysostom Press, POB 536, House Springs, MO 63051. An Orthodox publication, The Bible and the holy Fathers for Orthodox (compiled and edited by Johanna Maney; Monastery Books, 1990) offers Patristic views of Scripture lessons on the days of the liturgical year.
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It is fairly unsettling to
see translators missing the chance to reflect the rhetoric that Greek writers
have been so famous for. An example comes from a French translation
of St. Gregory Palamãs; I present a fairly close translation of the Greek,
which comes from a dramatic passage (these words are followed by even more
pronounced rhetoric) and then a translation of the French translation. The French says in my literal rendering: "Do you see that if one desires to oppose oneself to sin, acquire virtue, find the recompense of the combat for virtue, or rather the intelligent meaning [sens]--security deposit--of that recompense, it is necessary to get the spirit to return within the body and within oneself?" " |
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A general linguistic point is that languages categorize reality differently.
German, e.g., has got two kinds of “knowing”—knowing things and
knowing people. Trying to make such
a distinction in English (which “neutralizes the distinctio) when trans-lating
German is not useful. The problem
becomes more delicate when English can but doesn’t have to make a distinction
another language has got to make. We
can distinguish past sat from progressive was sitting from
habitual used to sit from characteristic would sit, not to speak of
has sat, has been sitting, had sat, had been sitting.
(English has also got nine posterior modalities; see Bailey, Essays on
time-based linguistic analysis, Oxford University Press [1996]; see
“posterior” in the Index.) But
we cannot say was standing or used to stand for a continuous past
action when no locational dixis is present.
Thus, “Troy was standing/ used to stand 600 years,” is un-English.
That Greek has continuous and perfective aspects that are obligatory-—forced on the writer whether they matter or not does not mean that a good English translation must use them when they are irrelvant and hence “neutralized” or ignored (not forced on a writer) in English. We should translate them only when they make a difference. Even then, we would not translate the Greek equivalent of “Troy was standing 600 years” as such. |
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