mls@sfsup.att.com (Mike Siemon) (12/19/90)
In article <Dec.16.22.41.43.1990.24198@athos.rutgers.edu> h@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au (Richard A. O'Keefe) writes: >Oh dear oh dear oh dear. Paul, of course, didn't use the word "nature" >at all, and unless you use a GREEK concordance your word study is going >to be at serious risk of misleading you. ... >Several different words are translated "nature" in the NIV. The one >Michael I Bushnell appears to have in mind (because it is often >paired with the word "sinful") is <sarx>, meaning "flesh", "body". I have just come from a digression prompted by this remark -- picking up a concordance to the AV and looking up all the "nature" and "flesh" references in the Greek text. And as you might expect, the AV does NOT confuse these (nor do any of its descendants in the chain of translations.) If anything, "nature" is more tightly bound to the Greek _physis_ than is compatible with normal English idiom (and "flesh" is used despite being not an English idiom at all, except through scriptural influence!) I do NOT think that Michael Bushnell needs to be taken to task for use of English language reference aids. Scripture is often translated *overly* literally, and NT Greek is hardly so subtle as to leave translators stymied. Paraphrases might cause some confusion as to what the original terms were -- the standard translations don't have THAT problem! The *only* case I picked up where the concordance (an older generation's handbook, the _Cruden's_, as I have no recent concordance on my shelves, prefering to use software to scan my online texts :-)) refers to "nature" and the Greek has something other than (some form of) _physis_ is of some interest in itself; it is James 3:6 -- the KJV has: "And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity: so is the tongue among our members, that it defileth the whole body, and setteth on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire of hell." the NEB has: "And the tongue is in effect a fire. It represents among our members the world with all its wickedness; it pollutes our whole being; it keeps the wheel of our existence red- hot, and its flames are fed by hell." the Greek is: "Kai he: glo:ssa pu:r; ho kosmos te:s adikias he: glo:ssa kathistatai en tois melesin he:mo:n, he: spilousa holon to so:ma kai phlogizousa ton trochon te:s geneseo:s kai phlogizmene: hupo te:s geenne:s." This is interesting for the vaguely Buddhist-sounding "cycle of becoming" (_trochos te:s geneseo:s_). It does NOT use _physis_, but "becoming" is a part of the Greek philosophical vocabulary closely related to "nature." In general, the non-Greek reading memebership of soc.religion.christian need not wilt before O'Keefe's pedantry. English translations (especially if you refer to several recent ones, say the [N|R]EB, the (N)RSV, the NIV) are pretty good, and the English reference aids are fairly reliable. The major danger in use of a translation is where a translator's choice forces one meaning where the original may be more ambiguous. There is really VERY little in NT scholarship that hinges on the details of the Greek (mostly, questions of sources.) If one "learns Greek" and only reads the NT, one might as well not bother; to truly *read* these texts requires familiarity with the wider Hellenistic context -- in which Paul's use of _physis_ has links to the pop philosophies of cynicism and stoicism, which also lie behind the usage of _natura_ (or any of its cognates) as THE standard Latin replacement for Greek _physis_. And much of the Hellenistic context can be found in translation, as well. -- Michael L. Siemon In so far as people think they can see the m.siemon@ATT.COM "limits of human understanding", they think ...!att!sfsup!mls of course that they can see beyond these. standard disclaimer -- Ludwig Wittgenstein