Friday, November 18, 2011
John 3:13
"And no one hath up-stepped into upward-vision, but the one who down-stepped out of upward-vision, even the Son of humanity, who is continually in upward-vision." Jesus' self-described title is "Son of humanity." Not only did this connect him to the prophetic motif of the OT, but it emphasizes his common humanity. And, as a son of humanity, he is continually in upward-vision. The ENT uses italics when a word is not literally present in the Greek text. In this case, it is used to add a word that emphasizes the present tense used in the original. This implied word makes clear that Jesus was amazingly living in upward vision even as conversing with Nicodemus.
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I just discovered your approach about an hour ago -- just curious -- why do you say "son of humanity" rather than plugging in etymological meanings for the Greek υιος του ανθρωπου?
ReplyDeleteI could have translated "son of the human" for that phrase and perhaps I should do so in a second edition ENT? My thought at the time is that the singular was being used generically for humanity, rather than as indicating a particular human.
ReplyDelete"the singular was being used generically for humanity"
ReplyDeletewell I'm sure most folks would agree with you, although in the spirit of being extremely literal I'd have just left it as "man" or maybe "human being"...
but what I was really asking about, is the fact that ανθρωπος has an etymology just as surely as θεος does. I guess I'm just curious how you decide which words to take back to their roots, and which to leave in their more-or-less present-day meanings....
Oh, wait, I see. My husband's older American Heritage Dictionary (1976) gives a possible Indo-European root for anthropo- but it just means "man" and anyway they say it's questionable that that really is the root. My newer American Heritage Dictionary (2011) just says that anthropo- is from the Greek.
So I guess you really couldn't put an etymological gloss for ανθρωπος...
along the same lines -- how do you go about determining the etymology of the Greek? the only method I have, is to try to think of an English cognate (such as anthropology or some such, for ανθρωπος). But how would one search out the etymological roots of υιος, for which I cannot think of an English cognate?
ReplyDeleteguess I should wait and read the book... I assume you describe your methods there...
:-)