by ackack 7 Replies latest watchtower bible
Looking at the NWT, I notice that Matt 24:46 uses the word "arrival". But in vs 44 where it says you wouldn't know the day or hour, it uses "coming".
This is the same greek word though. Obviously this is an attempt to seperate these two verses, to make them seem like two seperate events.
Doesn't this blow away the FDS concept? How on earth could an apologist justify this?
ackack
Greetings!
The FDS concept is blown away by other more simple arguments and reasoning and more forcefuls ones also.
Regarding your post though, I am not a scholar of Greek but it seems clear that verse 44 includes an imperfected tense of the Greek word, thus the NWT's wording of "is coming" seems accurate in that Christ's aka the "master"'s coming is portrayed as a future event.
Verse 26 instead clearly refers to a completed or perfected tense and sense of the Greek word. Thus as the NWT footnote reads, the translation is literally "having come" which the alternate wording of "arriving" is a reasonable substitute for and is just a matter of aesthetics.
same word yes, but the passage clearly has two different tenses or senses, the first of the future perfection and the latter of the past or perfected sense.
-Eduardo
As Fred Franz wrote in many a "questions from readers" in the 60s & 70s when translation issues came up, "this goes to show the importance of knowing God's purposes when one translates the Bible". Sorry, at work & don't have the particular reference. Blondie or someone could probably find examples fairly quickly.
I.e., "we are allowed to use our biases when translating the Bible, because we are the faithful & discreet slave--but it is outrageously heinous when other translators allow their own biases to color their work."
Circular reasoning at its finest!
re: tenses. Yes, they are different tenses, but how are these two verses seperated in explaining the FDS doctrine. Its really quite incredible that these verses can be pulled so painfully out of context, when right beside it, it explains when this "coming" or "arrival" would be.
But I shouldn't really talk, I fell for it long enough myself. :)
Yes it is the very same verb in two distinct modes and tenses: indicative present in v. 44, participle aorist in v. 46. No difference whatsoever in meaning. The mode & tense difference does not warrant a change of verbal group (to arrive vs. to come) in the perspective of the allegedly "literal" NWT.
The morphological difference between erkhomai and elthon (two different roots) reflects a very common phenomenon in many languages: formal irregularities, including the alternate use of different roots, precisely happen in the most basic vocabulary at the whim of popular usage as it gets established in time. Everyday verbs may combine several roots, making up a seemingly heteroclitous conjugation which is actually a completely fixed pattern and allows for no semantic nuance. This is the case of the French verb aller (to go) which combines three different roots: Je vais (I go), nous allons (we go), j'irai (I will go). Nobody with any knowledge of French would suggest a difference of meaning between the three forms.
The subtle chronological distinctions which the WT makes between "arrival" and "coming" on the ridiculous "basis" of fixed morphological characteristics of the Greek language are all the more astounding when you think that, according to its fundamentalistic views, this is what Jesus is supposed to have taught... in Aramaic.
The subtle chronological distinctions which the WT makes between "arrival" and "coming" on the ridiculous "basis" of fixed morphological characteristics of the Greek language are all the more astounding when you think that, according to its fundamentalistic views, this is what Jesus is supposed to have taught... in Aramaic.
True. I've always enjoyed following WTS's endless paranoid morphological derivations of the "original" Greek meanings.
What is equally interesting is: just how good was Mathew's, Luke's Greek if it wasn't their mother tongue (or whoever was supposed to author the gospels). Were they so great linguists as to consciously and precisely encode diachronic, etymological, morphology-based meanings which were supposed to allow the NWT translators living thousands of years later to come up with such brilliant renderings of parousia?
Pole
It is clear that the Parable of the Faithful and Wise Servant (Matthew 24:45-51) is placed here in the text to illustrate how "the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect" (v. 44). The Parable of the Ten Bridesmaids in 25:1-13 and the Parable of the Talents in 25:14-30 have a similar purpose, to explain away the apparent "delay" in the Lord's parousia. That the "coming" referred to in v. 44 is the same one referred to in the parable is indicated by the parallelism of wording:
Matthew 24:42, 44: "Stay awake, because you do not know (ouk oidate) the day (poia hémera) when your master (kurios) is coming (erkhetai)....You too must stand ready because the Son of Man is coming (erkhetai) at an hour (hóra) you do not expect (ou dokeite)".
Matthew 24:48, 50: "As for the dishonest servant who says for himself, 'My master (kurios) is delaying,' ... his master (kurios) will come (héxei) on a day (en hémera) he does not expect (ou prosdoka) and at an hour (en hóra) he does not know (ou ginóskei)".
It is interesting how the Society applies to Parable of the Ten Bridesmaids to "Armageddon" or the eschatological judgment, while applying the Parable of the Faithful and Wise Servant to an entirely different "event", the inspection of believers in 1919. This is remarkable, because of former parable also is connected to Matthew 24:42-44 by dramatizing the theme of wakefulness and repeats as a refrain the command in v. 42: "Stay awake, because you do not know either the day or hour" (v. 13). These parables, and the burglar simile in v. 42-44, are likewise connected with the similitude in v. 37-40 pertaining to Noah's Flood ("As it was in Noah's day, so will it be when the Son of Man comes"), which the Society also wants to apply to "Armageddon", and more centrally to the coming of the Son of Man "on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory" in v. 29-31 which also is construed as occurring at the end. Jesus' statement that "no one knows the day or hour" in v. 36 (which similarly is construed as referring to the end of the "system of things") of course is connected with the similar statements in v. 42, v. 44, v. 50, and 25:13. It is hard to avoid the obvious conclusion that they all refer to the same thing.
"this goes to show the importance of knowing God's purposes when one translates the Bible"
"take heed about how you hear, for to him who has more will be given"
