Guest Blog

Hi everyone--(Leslie, Jeremy...I don't know who else reads this!)

This is B.L.W. (Braden's Lovely Wife) and I have invaded his blog to post some of my recent thoughts.

So, I am in seminary and I'm studying Greek and Hebrew (at the same time) and the other day I was thinking of how interesting it is studying new languages.  While many of the main concepts are the same, other details are different.  For example, Greek is practically defined/recognized by cases (nominative, genitive, vocative, etc) whereas Hebrew doesn't have them (per se).  

The thing I was thinking about recently involves the definite article "the."  In Hebrew, this is shown with a specific prefixed letter.  Our professor has taught us that if the prefix is there you can translate it "the" but if it is not there you can't and it has to be translated "a."  This has pretty serious implications sometimes when translating from Scripture.  (Is it "a god" or "the god"..etc etc)

However, in Greek, I have been given the impression that, in translation, whatever fits is how you translate it.  There are some obvious cases, but otherwise it is up for interpretation.  There isn't really anything specific to show it one way or the other like there is in Hebrew.  

I am wondering how much of this is just because I'm at an "elementary" level of learning grammar.  Obviously, if I were a scholar translator and I was actually translating Scripture into something being published then I would have to know more details.  But it was an interesting comparison for me to make.

Okay, thats all for now I think.  It was a little difficult explaining my thoughts without being able to type the actual Greek/Hebrew letters/words....but hopefully my attempts are successful.

Until the next time I hack in here.

Peach out.