Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Peter Kirk" <Peter_Kirk AT sil.org>]

You will have to ask David Bivin exactly what he meant. I guess he means
that its sentence structure is closer to non-Jewish Greek and less like LXX,
but I don't know how he measured this. I quite agree that foreign syntax
does not imply actual translation. It might suggest that the speaker/author
was thinking in her/his mother tongue and translating on the fly; or it
might simply be characteristic of a particular sub-group's dialect.

Peter Kirk

> -----Original Message-----
> From: c stirling bartholomew [mailto:cc.constantine AT worldnet.att.net]
> Sent: 15 November 2001 18:29
> To: Peter Kirk; Biblical Hebrew
> Subject: Re: The Gospels being in Hebrew originally
>
>
> on 11/15/01 4:44 AM, Peter Kirk wrote:
>
> > Contrary to what one might expect, however, the book of Hebrews
> is written
> > in the purest Greek of any book in the New Testament.
>
> Peter,
>
> I assume you are talking about Hebrews minus the extensive OT quotations.
>
> I wonder what sort of criteria one uses to measure "pure Greek." The
> discourse structure of the Epistle to the Hebrews includes a lot of deeply
> imbedded hyper-ordination which is not typically associated with Hebrew
> texts. However, until some presents a full set of rules for producing a
> "pure" Hellenistic Greek paragraph, I will continue to protest the notion
> that we can postulate a "Hebrew Original" every time we see some author
> speaking (writing) Greek with a Hebrew accent.
>
> I live in a multi-lingual community. I hear people speaking "Translation
> English" every day of the week. I don't conclude from this that they
> composed their sentence first in German or French or Russian and then
> translated it before they speak.
>
> greetings,
>
> Clay
>
>
> --
> Clayton Stirling Bartholomew
> Three Tree Point
> P.O. Box 255 Seahurst WA 98062
>
>