Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Greek musings

Caution, this post might be hazardous to your language skills :)

I was reading through Romans 7 last night in the Greek with a friend. We noticed an interesting thing in verse 15:
ὃ γὰρ κατεργάζομαι οὐ γινώσκω: οὐ γὰρ ὃ θέλω τοῦτο πράσσω, ἀλλ' ὃ μισῶ τοῦτο ποιῶ.
hO GAR KATAERGAZOMAI OU GINWSKO: OU GAR hO QELW TOUTO PRASSW, ALL hO MISW TOUTO POIW.

See the three different words for "do?" The English versions have a hard time with this, usually just glossing them all was "do." But, I think Paul is trying to make a distinction here. Not totally sure what it is, but I suspect this translation might bring it to English a bit better:

For the thing I accomplish, I don't understand. For what I do not desire, this is the thing I practice, and the thing I hate, I end up doing.

OK, what do you think? Tear it to shreds :)

By the way, the interplay between γινώσκω (GINWSKW) and οἶδα (OIDA) in this section is also interesting...

4 comments:

willtolive said...

No ripping or tearing for such desire to question....

When I read it, whatever synonym one uses (accomplish or do), still communicates a synonymous thought. Whether I read it as "do" or "accomplish" (work out, fashion,conquer...etc) I know what Paul is saying without misunderstanding. I am interested in what difference you see between the two uses?

Certain words do have color in their connotations, I would agree, but still seem pretty transferable in denotation.

Great challenge....

Brian Small said...

It could simply mean be a stylistic choice that Paul is making so as not to become too repetitive in his word usage.

Bill Heroman said...

Nice catch! I also notice your 'accomplished' (the 'katerga-' root) is all over the rest of that chapter, so that doesn't seem accidental. Btw, "wreak" seems to work for the old "wrought" and "worked out", at least for thinking about it, as so: Sin 'wreaked' lust. and then Good 'wreaked' death. And then Paul says, "What I'm wreaking, I don't know..." That plays nicely into the next three uses as well.

As far as 'prassw' and 'poiw', it could be that the need for stylistic diversity is what initially prompted Paul to consider which word would fit best with each portion of his thought. (Sounds like a natural part of the writing process to me, anyway.) So if 'prassw' means 'practice habitually' the lack of a habitual element stands out in the second word. Further, if we keep the traditional structure rendered by most translations, the overall sense of it could be taken as: "I do not practice habitually the things I would like to, but I [wind up doing] something I hate."

Taken that way, and if the distinction is solid, the point may be to show that Paul's generic indiscresion refers more to occasional slip-ups than chronic or licentious failure. That would seem very appropo, wouldn't it?

Just musing. At any rate, thanks very much for this post, James. I'd love to know if there's any validity to these impressions...

Bill Heroman said...

Oh, btw, I failed to admit what I assumed should be obvious. I'm far below novice level at greek translation. Duh, eh? ;)