Okay - how to translate the AWFUL greek of Revelation.

by hamsterbait 11 Replies latest jw friends

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  hamsterbait

  I have been thinking about Leos post on Revelation.

  The early Church Fathers could see how bad the Greek was. Unfortunately modern translations iron everything out and make it sound perfectly cogent. By correcting the grammar en route to the target language, the scholars are actually hiding the real text, and so prevent us from realising that it could have been written by a wing nut.

  Are there any places where the use of the language is so bad, that if we translated honestly we might get:

  "It are de rebelations what Jesus are givin to John"

  or other such risible stuff?

  HB
• 

  DoomVoyager

  I'll see if I can find anything in my interlinear during the BS tonight. (bump!)
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  PrimateDave

  Curious. I read Leolaia's excellent post on Revelation too. Is the Greek text in today's popular interlinear translations also a corrected text? How can one know that they have the "original" text and not some version later corrected according to some religious ideology?
  
  Dave
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  Leolaia

  The most complete list of solecisms can be found in the first volume of Aune's magnificent commentary. However I am currently traveling and do not have access to that tome, so in lieu of it here are some pages from RH Charles' commentary. I have highlighted some key assessments of his:

  

  

  

  

  There are about four more pages of this. Hope this helps!
• 

  greendawn

  What's the link to Leolaia's thread on Revelation?
  
  The Greek used in Revelation was not hopelessly bad but it was certainly substandard. It's hard to see how the writer of the Gospel of John with its polished perfect Greek and the writer of Revelation could be the same person. Unless Revelation was written much earlier before John got to learn Greek well or perhaps the Gospel was proofread and corrected by someone that knew Greek perfectly well.
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  outofthebox

  Interesting stuff. Wow.
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  Leolaia

  It's hard to see how the writer of the Gospel of John with its polished perfect Greek and the writer of Revelation could be the same person. Unless Revelation was written much earlier before John got to learn Greek well or perhaps the Gospel was proofread and corrected by someone that knew Greek perfectly well.

  Those are good questions.

  The problem with the first option is that the book in its current form belongs to the late first century, probably published during the reign of Domitian (as suggested by internal evidence and external evidence), and the gospel of John was published close to the same time (as the oldest manuscript dates to c. AD 125), or earlier. It is possible however that Revelation incorporates and adapts an older apocalypse which originated most of the solecisms. I would have to check with Aune however to see whether they are really concentrated in the sections thought to derive from the book's source. The problem with the second possibility you mention is that the literary skill in Greek in John permeates through the entire book and shows evidence of someone who thought in Greek -- as opposed to Revelation where it is apparent that the author's primary language was Hebrew or Aramaic. For instance, the story with Nicodemus in ch. 3 entirely turns on a homonym that exists only in Greek, not in Aramaic, although the latter is posited as the language spoken by Jesus (cf. 1:42, 19:13, 20:16). The literary style in John is highly distinctive and shared to some extent by 1 John. There are some latent Aramaisms but importantly these are quite different than the ones in Revelation, so the difference is not explainable on the theory of common authorship by positing a secondary proofreader. These Aramaisms are imo better explained as simply characteristic of the fluent Greek spoken in the (Jewish/Jewish-Christian) community to which the author belongs.
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  DoomVoyager

  Well, Leo has you covered, but I did have a look at the interlinear tonight. Of course, before I even opened it I realized it was a doomed effort.

  If you take a clunky, hack-job Greek text and translate it word-for-word into another language, English in this case, you'll get clunky, half-job english.

  But if you take a beautifully written Greek text and translate it word for word into English, you'll still get clunky, half-job english because languages don't express ideas in the same way!

  So yeah it was pointless from the start. Don't know why I didn't realize that immediately. However it was still more interesting to read my interlinear than it was to listen to the dreck they were spewing.
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  PrimateDave

  For Greendawn, that link you requested:
  
  http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/12/166855/3090715/post.ashx#3090715
  
  Dave
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  snowbird

  Three little thought questions:

  E. W. Bullinger is reported to have said that Revelation was written primarily for the Jews. Was the writer's Greek sending a message of some sort?

  The writer confesses that he was extremely agitated by the visions he was receiving; would that not exacerbate the problem of accurately expressing his thoughts?

  Also, could the Gospel of John have been dictated by John to a person more well-versed in Greek?

  Sylvia