Monday with Mounce

When the biblical writer sets of a parallel structure, I think it is important to try and keep that parallelism in translation. But there are times when doing so obscures the meaning of a word, and you have to choose between parallelism and accurately conveying the meaning of the word. In Matthew 7:13–14, is the path of discipleship “narrow” or “difficult”?

There is meaning in Greek word order, but it is normally so nuanced that it can’t come out in translation. Ephesians 2:8–9 is one of the rare exceptions, illustrating how to emphasize a word or phrase by changing its normal position in the sentence. You can also watch this vlog on YouTube.

Have you ever noticed that when you see something, perhaps something new or different, all of a sudden you start seeing it everywhere? You see a yellow car, and all of a sudden there are yellow cars everywhere? That’s how I’m feeling about the common belief that formal equivalent translations are better because they show the underlying Hebrew and Greek structures. My point is that in almost every (if not all) verse in the New Testament, the Greek has been altered in come way, and the only way to know when a verse reflects the underlying Greek is to know the Greek.

Paul is ending his letter to the Corinthian church and concludes with a general admonition. V 13 illustrates the issue of aspect, and v 14 shows a troubling omission in some translations.

Sometimes the absence of a comma can significantly alter the meaning of a passage, and its inclusion can clarify. 1 Corinthians 13:2 provides such an example.