Wednesday, October 1, 2008

Bonehead moves in translating Greek AND "Thank God there are no original manuscripts"

Because neither of these thoughts were really long enough to mandate their own blog post, I figured I'd throw two completely unrelated things together...

First, every student of any language makes mistakes (atleast that's what I tell myself so that I feel better). One thing I've been doing over the last few months is confusing words that end in -νται as a participle instead of recognizing them as using the primary middle-passive suffixes. After having crammed as much as I could today into my head about Participles, I feel silly.


Ever done something while learning a language that you later realized what completely incorrect?


Secondly, a strange thought occured to me the other night. I think I'm actually glad that we don't have original copies of the New Testament documents. After seeing various posts around the net of the over-theologizing of grammar that goes on now, can you imagine the fervor with which pseudo-theologians and grammarians would pontificate upon the tense or mood or aspect or whatever of a particular word? It would be unchecked and without the caution that people have to exercise now due to lack of these originals. An odd thought, but there you have it - thank God we have no original manuscripts.

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