Biblical Hebrew Forum

["K Randolph" <kwrandolph AT gmail.com>]

Peter:

My purpose is not to discuss the Greek verbal system. Rather to
discuss the use of translations as a guide to understanding Hebrew.

Seeing as it is demonstrable that some of the authors of the New
Testament had less than a literary command of the Greek language, and
I suspect the same is true of some of the LXX translators, could the
use of the grammatical future tense have been understood by those
authors as something other than the future (e.g. continuous present)?
If so, how far can we use those translations as a guide as to how
those people understood the Hebrew language?

Karl W. Randolph.

On 4/11/07, Peter Kirk <peter AT qaya.org> wrote:
> On 12/04/2007 00:30, K Randolph wrote:
> > ...
> > With this as a background, how much can we trust the classical
> > understanding of Greek verbal usages to inform us how the authors of
> > the LXX and New Testament used the same? And how the Hebrew was
> > understood at that time?
> >
> >
> Karl, this is certainly not the place to discuss the Greek verbal
> system. Suffice it to say that the LXX translators, quoted by the NT
> authors, used here a Greek future tense. This probably but not certainly
> implies that the LXX translators understood this passage as having
> future application, although not necessarily distant future. But then
> there is good reason to think that the LXX translators had less than
> perfect command of Hebrew. They may well have translated verb tenses on
> the basis of their presupposed interpretations of passages as much as
> from what the Hebrew actually meant. So, here and more generally, they
> are an informative but not reliable guide to the meaning of the original
> Hebrew verbs.
>
> --
> Peter Kirk
> E-mail:  peter AT qaya.org
> Blog:    http://www.qaya.org/blog/
> Website: http://www.qaya.org/