I'm not in favor of discussion by video link or otherwise, and prefer we discuss directly, but I know I'm in the minority there.
As for oldiesman's link, it led to a page I, on the whole, didn't find particularly useful.....however, I followed a number of the links and found a single link that I found useful.
He takes a while to get there- it's a bit like reading one of my expository posts- but I thought the answer was good enough that it was work a link. I won't do the writer the injustice of quoting a relevant snippet because the journey was as much a part of the answer as the direct explanation. So, even I can make exceptions.
What is the mission to the gentiles Larry Hurtado is writing about here? Is it the one where Gentiles would continue converting to Judaism like in the past once they believed on Christ? Or is he writing about the Jews and Gentiles becoming one in the body of Christ according to the doctrine of the great mystery taught by Paul? The problem is Jesus did not know about this mystery during his earthly ministry unless, of course, one believes he was God. Mark, however, would have known about it when he wrote his gospel because Paul's letters would have been circulating throughout the churches at that time. Did this influence his writings?
Read Mark in light of Paul. Who influenced whom?
Paul preached Christ crucified. Some have argued Mark was written to fill the massive void left by the Pauline corpus: the life of Jesus.
The first part of the AI Overview says, "The woman is persistent in her request to have her daughter healed. She is unafraid to bother Jesus and trusts in his goodness and sense of humor."
I agree that she was unafraid to bother Jesus most likely because she was in desperate need of help for her daughter. Her pleading with Jesus to show her mercy may mean she trusts that he will do so, but it could also imply that she is hoping he will do so. My question is where in the story is there any sense of humor displayed? It's kind of a weird thing to suggest.
Matthew's account gives more details than Mark's. The words in brackets come from the Greek definitions of the words they follow. Matthew 15:21Then Jesus went thence, and departed into the coasts of Tyre and Sidon. 22And, behold, a woman of Canaan came out of the same coasts, and cried(often conveying strong emotion or urgency) unto him, saying, Have mercy(compassion) on me, O Lord, thou Son of David; my daughter is grievously(severely, cruelly) vexed (possessed) with a devil. 23But he answered her not a word. And his disciples came and besought him, saying, Send her away; for she crieth (often conveying strong emotion or urgency) after us. 24But he answered and said, I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel. 25Then came she and worshipped him (fell at his feet), saying, Lord, help me. 26But he answered and said, It is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it to dogs.27And she said, Truth, Lord: yet the dogseat of the crumbs which fall from their masters' table.28Then Jesus answered and said unto her, O woman, great is thy faith: be it unto thee even as thou wilt. And her daughter was made whole from that very hour.
The AI Overview of Jesus's response is: "Jesus's words can seem harsh, but he is testing the woman's faith and commitment to her request."
I don't think it was a test since the text doesn't say that it was. So, what did she do to make Jesus say she had great faith? It wasn't her persistent crying out as she followed him or that she called him Lord and the son of David or that she clearly made known her need because after all that, he answered her not a word and then proceeded to give her a reason why her daughter should not be healed. It also wasn't that she fell at his feet and again asked for help because he just doubled down on his reason after that. It was only after she came up with a common-sense loophole to Jesus' reason - mind you, it was one that required her to play the role of a dog - that he was impressed enough to heal her daughter. Who would have guessed that this was what it would take? That's my problem with the idea of needing to have faith - I've come to find it a guessing game as to what you should do or say, and it all doesn't matter anyway because prayers are answered by God at random.
I'm not in favor of discussion by video link or otherwise, and prefer we discuss directly, but I know I'm in the minority there.
As for oldiesman's link, it led to a page I, on the whole, didn't find particularly useful.....however, I followed a number of the links and found a single link that I found useful.
He takes a while to get there- it's a bit like reading one of my expository posts- but I thought the answer was good enough that it was work a link. I won't do the writer the injustice of quoting a relevant snippet because the journey was as much a part of the answer as the direct explanation. So, even I can make exceptions.
Thanks WordWolf - I'll look at what he has to say.
Paul preached Christ crucified. Some have argued Mark was written to fill the massive void left by the Pauline corpus: the life of Jesus.
It is questionable as to why the gospels were not written until years after Paul wrote his major letters to the church in which he defined what Christianity was all about. And yes, having questions and looking for their answers is a good thing.
I'm not in favor of discussion by video link or otherwise, and prefer we discuss directly, but I know I'm in the minority there.
As for oldiesman's link, it led to a page I, on the whole, didn't find particularly useful.....however, I followed a number of the links and found a single link that I found useful.
He takes a while to get there- it's a bit like reading one of my expository posts- but I thought the answer was good enough that it was work a link. I won't do the writer the injustice of quoting a relevant snippet because the journey was as much a part of the answer as the direct explanation. So, even I can make exceptions.
I think It is a very interesting piece of writing that has good ideas for discussion. I'll bring one up when I get the chance. Thanks again for sharing it.
Even the link for The Times clergy survey at the end brings up relevant points right from the start (which is all I've read at this point).
I'm not in favor of discussion by video link or otherwise, and prefer we discuss directly, but I know I'm in the minority there.
As for oldiesman's link, it led to a page I, on the whole, didn't find particularly useful.....however, I followed a number of the links and found a single link that I found useful.
He takes a while to get there- it's a bit like reading one of my expository posts- but I thought the answer was good enough (emphasis is mine) that it was work a link. I won't do the writer the injustice of quoting a relevant snippet because the journey was as much a part of the answer as the direct explanation. So, even I can make exceptions.
I find it interesting that Michael Hampson focuses solely on the misogynistic implication of calling the woman a dog. He thinks that nine-tenth of its harshness would be reduced if it was a male who had come to Jesus in this account.
I mostly agree with this, and the fact that Jesus never said anything of the sort to the Roman centurion who wanted Jesus to heal his servant gives some credence to Hampson’s point of view here.
His conclusion is that “the word kynarioi is untranslatable” and writes, ”And that is why there is no place in the English rendering of Matthew 15.21-28 for the d-word: because the d-word has a misogynistic nuance in English that is not there in the original Greek.” (Not sure how he knows this as there are no original mss.)
His solution is simply to cut out the phrases where “dog” is used when teaching these verses, and what remains (to quote him) “is enough” to make known Jesus' point. What is left then is "Jesus said, ‘It is not right to take food away from the children.’ She said, ‘Yes, Lord, but surely there will be crumbs that fall from the table.’"
He goes further though to say that "any translation that still uses that word is – well, frankly, for virtually all purposes, and certainly for reading aloud in church, just wrong" and that doing so is a "serious error in translation, with terrible consequences."
However, I don't think ignoring "the elephant in the room" strengthens anyone's conviction to know and understand "the truth."
"However, I don't think ignoring "the elephant in the room" strengthens anyone's conviction to know and understand "the truth." "
Not trying to be difficult here, trying to discuss. I'm not sure what you're referring to as "the elephant in the room" here. If you'll tell me what it is, I'll try to address it rather than ignore it. (Not that I'm that writer, but I am here to discuss.)
"However, I don't think ignoring "the elephant in the room" strengthens anyone's conviction to know and understand "the truth." "
Not trying to be difficult here, trying to discuss. I'm not sure what you're referring to as "the elephant in the room" here. If you'll tell me what it is, I'll try to address it rather than ignore it. (Not that I'm that writer, but I am here to discuss.)
You might have misunderstood me. I was only speaking of Hampson ignoring the problem - not you. The "elephant in the room" is that the word "dog" is in the Greek text for Matthew 15:26-27, and Hampson's solution to ignore them or have translations delete them from the bible seems to be promoting willful ignorance (IOW - burying one's head in the sand).
Do you think this is a good enough way to deal with these scriptures?
"You might have misunderstood me. I was only speaking of Hampson ignoring the problem - not you."
Right, but since he's not here, and we're the ones discussing, and I brought it up, I thought it was incumbent upon me to address whatever your concern was.
"The "elephant in the room" is that the word "dog" is in the Greek text for Matthew 15:26-27, and Hampson's solution to ignore them or have translations delete them from the bible seems to be promoting willful ignorance (IOW - burying one's head in the sand)."
OK, I can address that.
"...Hampson's solution to ignore them or have translations delete them from the bible seems to be promoting willful ignorance (IOW - burying one's head in the sand).
Do you think this is a good enough way to deal with these scriptures?"
The first thing I agree with is that rushing to an answer doesn't do this justice. So, a flat "yes" or "no" here is no good. (Have I stopped beating my wife?)
In general, and as a guiding principle, I tend to think the primary goal of translation is to correctly translate, which sounds redundant, but actually is not, since that's what we're discussing. I tend to think a translator should not leave things untranslated.
I'm also well aware that incorrect translations are problems.
If you read any English version I'm aware of, you'll find the word "wolves" used in a negative way, as something feared. I object to the incorrect translations. The animal in question was the JACKAL, which was native to Palestine and the Middle East (the wolf was not.) It's as unfair to render it "wolf" as it is to render it "jaguar"- knowing that they're native to the Americas and nowhere else. What does it matter? It mattered to the real wolves. People in Europe hunted them down, partly because they were falsely correlated with evil workings. (Partly for other reasons also.)
I'm also aware that sometimes a problematic word is best left untranslated- if you want to understand what was going on. We previously discussed once the usage of the word that is, in the Greek, "anothen." Jesus told Nicodemus that unless a man be born anothen, he couldn't see the kingdom of God. Much wrangling has been made of what the Aramaic did or didn't say, of what this word means here, but ultimately, this word was not critical to understanding Nicodemus' reaction to Jesus. Nicodemus heard Jesus, and asked how a man could be born when he's old? Nicodemus didn't pay any attention to the word "anothen" there, just on the (adult) man being born despite already being an adult. In that case, a lot of arguing about something that didn't matter could be skipped by not translating "anothen" there because it was non-critical to understanding the account. Do I prefer leaving anything untranslated? No, but I'm aware that sometimes, we have limited options, and I'd prefer to pick the least-objectionable option out of those available, if I must pick at all.
So, do I think that leaving a word untranslated is allowable at all, and an option at least some of the time? Yes, because I've seen it work before. The example I just gave is sufficient for me.
The next question would be- do I think this particular situation can only be served by leaving a word untranslated? That's a much more specific question, and one that can be addressed more specifically.
Hampson made his case that there was no clear English word or phrase that could translate this word, retaining the original meaning while not injecting an additional meaning into it due to connotations in English. I think he made a sufficient case. As in the example I gave, the account is fully coherent without it, and makes sense. If it's included, the only "benefits" are to add something problematic that wasn't there to begin with, and the additional "benefit" of 100% completion of translating everything. I find that a goal more worth achieving in video games than in translations, where the answers are not always so clear.
Was there an incident? Yes. But keeping in a poorly-translated word means we lose what happened while everyone fixates on the meaning that was never there to begin with.
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I'm aware of a different incident where a translation COULD be corrected, but the wrong word means people fixate on something that doesn't exist.
"It's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven." I wish I had a dollar for every time someone taught about the IMAGINARY gate entering Jerusalem called "the eye of the needle". When passing through this IMAGINARY gate, imaginary merchants would need to remove the imaginary trading goods from their imaginary camels, then get the camels to scoot through this tiny gate, then reload them. No city would put up with such a restriction for one moment longer than it needed to. ("We've been clearing the rubble from that earthquake. The only way to get in now is very narrow. We won't have that widened for another day or so.") Residents of Jerusalem weren't idiots. Any entrance like that would discourage trade and slow down trade. (Find me one Jew in any country in any century who is in favor of hindering business deals.) So, people fixate on this thing about a camel passing through the eye of a needle.
But it's an incorrect translation. In Aramaic, the word for "camel" and the word for "rope" are effectively homonyms. (I examined the words side by side, and could not see any difference in their spellings.) So, passing a ROPE through the eye of a needle. The entire sentence was about something physically impossible, and is much easier to picture with rope. If it was a single thread, it could pass. As a rope, it was the right shape, but far too large to pass.
Mind you, if we had no way of knowing this, if one were actually vague about what was passing through the eye of a needle, one would still get the same meaning- something clearly impossible. There are people who say that it meant "camel" but the meaning of the sentence was something literally impossible. So, despite an incorrect translation, they get to the point anyway.
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I disagree with the characterization of Hampson as either "promoting willful ignorance" or "burying one's head in the sand." He's heading off a manufactured controversy that wasn't in the original, and staying focused on what the passage was actually about. I find that the opposite of "willful ignorance".
I suppose, if my whole reason for caring about this passage was in using the incorrect translation to make a point the original never made, all to make it look like the original had a problem it never had, then this approach might indeed look like "burying one's head in the sand." It certainly would take all the fun out of complaining about and criticizing the passage over what it never said in the original.
Myself, I blame the translators more than anyone else.
In general, and as a guiding principle, I tend to think the primary goal of translation is to correctly translate, which sounds redundant, but actually is not, since that's what we're discussing. I tend to think a translator should not leave things untranslated.
I'm also well aware that incorrect translations are problems.
If you read any English version I'm aware of, you'll find the word "wolves" used in a negative way, as something feared. I object to the incorrect translations. The animal in question was the JACKAL, which was native to Palestine and the Middle East (the wolf was not.) It's as unfair to render it "wolf" as it is to render it "jaguar"- knowing that they're native to the Americas and nowhere else. What does it matter? It mattered to the real wolves. People in Europe hunted them down, partly because they were falsely correlated with evil workings. (Partly for other reasons also.)
I'm also aware that sometimes a problematic word is best left untranslated- if you want to understand what was going on. We previously discussed once the usage of the word that is, in the Greek, "anothen." Jesus told Nicodemus that unless a man be born anothen, he couldn't see the kingdom of God. Much wrangling has been made of what the Aramaic did or didn't say, of what this word means here, but ultimately, this word was not critical to understanding Nicodemus' reaction to Jesus. Nicodemus heard Jesus, and asked how a man could be born when he's old? Nicodemus didn't pay any attention to the word "anothen" there, just on the (adult) man being born despite already being an adult. In that case, a lot of arguing about something that didn't matter could be skipped by not translating "anothen" there because it was non-critical to understanding the account. Do I prefer leaving anything untranslated? No, but I'm aware that sometimes, we have limited options, and I'd prefer to pick the least-objectionable option out of those available, if I must pick at all.
So, do I think that leaving a word untranslated is allowable at all, and an option at least some of the time? Yes, because I've seen it work before. The example I just gave is sufficient for me.
Concerning your reference to wolves above, you did not suggest in this case that the word should go untranslated but that it should just be translated “jackal.” For example: Genesis 49:27, ““Benjamin shall ravin as a wolf jackal: in the morning he shall devour the prey, and at night he shall divide the spoil.”
Concerning “anothen,” leaving it out would make the verse read as follows: John 3:3 Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Two problems with this is that it’s stating the obvious and also Jesus does go on to describe being born two ways – born of the flesh and born of the spirit.
I don't see the big problem with this Greek word. Any disagreement with “anothen” seems to be whether it means anew or again. “Anew” implies something made new usually as an improvement over the old while “again” implies something happening a second (or more) time.
Nicodemus obviously took “anothen” to mean born “again” as shown in his reply about entering the womb a “second time.” Since this was not what Jesus meant, he explains to Nicodemus the two kinds of births – to be born of the flesh and born of the spirit. The spirit would fit with “anothen” meaning “anew” as it is an improvement over being born of the flesh.
The Gospel of John which talks about being born again was written decades after Paul’s epistles to the church and Peter’s first epistle.
Therefore, the church already had been taught by Paul that the saints "are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you" in Romans 8 as well as them putting off the old man and putting on the new man in Ephesians 4. 1 Peter 1:23 uses the phrase “born again” when it compares being born of corruptible seed called the flesh in verse 24 with being born of incorruptible [seed] which supposedly means being born of the spirit.
Nicodemus told Jesus that no one could do the miracles he did “except God be with him.” Jesus’s reply to this statement appears to explain to Nicodemus in what way God was with him and that was because he was born of the spirit. Was this not a reference to what happened when the dove descended from heaven upon Jesus when he was baptized and with God saying, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased?"
The whole context of John 3:1-8 centers around the word "anothen" because it refers to being born of the spirit - a doctrine that is most prevalent in the NT. I can't see how leaving it out is beneficial.
Hampson made his case that there was no clear English word or phrase that could translate this word, retaining the original meaning while not injecting an additional meaning into it due to connotations in English. I think he made a sufficient case. As in the example I gave, the account is fully coherent without it, and makes sense. If it's included, the only "benefits" are to add something problematic that wasn't there to begin with, and the additional "benefit" of 100% completion of translating everything. I find that a goal more worth achieving in video games than in translations, where the answers are not always so clear.
Was there an incident? Yes. But keeping in a poorly-translated word means we lose what happened while everyone fixates on the meaning that was never there to begin with.
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I disagree with the characterization of Hampson as either "promoting willful ignorance" or "burying one's head in the sand." He's heading off a manufactured controversy that wasn't in the original, and staying focused on what the passage was actually about. I find that the opposite of "willful ignorance".
I suppose, if my whole reason for caring about this passage was in using the incorrect translation to make a point the original never made, all to make it look like the originalhad a problem it never had, then this approach might indeed look like "burying one's head in the sand." It certainly would take all the fun out of complaining about and criticizing the passage over what it never said in the original.
Am I missing something here? What "original" do you and Hampson think exists?
The Greek word “kunarion,” meaning “a small dog,” is used only 4 times in the NT, and they are all found in the account of the Canaanite woman in Matthew and Mark.
Now the other Greek word for dog, kuon, meaning a dog that is universally despised in the East, is clearly used that way 5 times in the NT. One of those usages is in Matthew 7:6 which is something like what Jesus said to the woman. It is, “Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.” Similar ideas but 2 different Greek word used for “dogs.” I'm interested in why this is.
Finally, in order to remove this d-word, Hampson suggests the passage should read as follows:
Jesus said, ‘It is not right to take food away from the children.’
She said, ‘Yes, Lord, but surely there will be crumbs that fall from the table.’
However, he does say in his article about that translation “Having to eat waste, and having to crawl under the table to collect it,is humiliation enough.” So with or without the d-word, the woman is feeling humiliated. It may not be what the whole passage is about, but it is still part of the passage.
I'm going to butt in and say that Christians and non-Christians alike have used the term "original" loosely in reference to the existing Greek manuscripts, and no one is suggesting these were the first manuscripts written by the original authors. We have copies of copies of copies, and while there are hundreds of discrepancies, most are minor. I wouldn't get hung up on the use of the word "original" in this context.
I'm aware of a different incident where a translation COULD be corrected, but the wrong word means people fixate on something that doesn't exist.
"It's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven." I wish I had a dollar for every time someone taught about the IMAGINARY gate entering Jerusalem called "the eye of the needle". When passing through this IMAGINARY gate, imaginary merchants would need to remove the imaginary trading goods from their imaginary camels, then get the camels to scoot through this tiny gate, then reload them. No city would put up with such a restriction for one moment longer than it needed to. ("We've been clearing the rubble from that earthquake. The only way to get in now is very narrow. We won't have that widened for another day or so.") Residents of Jerusalem weren't idiots. Any entrance like that would discourage trade and slow down trade. (Find me one Jew in any country in any century who is in favor of hindering business deals.) So, people fixate on this thing about a camel passing through the eye of a needle.
But it's an incorrect translation. In Aramaic, the word for "camel" and the word for "rope" are effectively homonyms. (I examined the words side by side, and could not see any difference in their spellings.) So, passing a ROPE through the eye of a needle. The entire sentence was about something physically impossible, and is much easier to picture with rope. If it was a single thread, it could pass. As a rope, it was the right shape, but far too large to pass.
Mind you, if we had no way of knowing this, if one were actually vague about what was passing through the eye of a needle, one would still get the same meaning- something clearly impossible. There are people who say that it meant "camel" but the meaning of the sentence was something literally impossible. So, despite an incorrect translation, they get to the point anyway.
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Thanks for bringing this one up as I had never heard of the camel/rope issue before. I’ve looked at a couple of websites which agree mostly with what you shared here.
The websites confirm that there is no evidence of the existence of a small gate in the walls of Jerusalem known as the “eye of the needle” where a man could barely fit through, let alone a camel.
Could Jesus have been using the figure of speech “hyperbole” if the word he used actually meant a camel? It makes for a more interesting image but like you say, a rope is definitely more logical than a camel.
My question concerns the point Jesus was making about rich men entering the kingdom of heaven. Do you think wealthy men in the Old Testament, such as the most wealthiest of all - Solomon, fit into what Jesus is saying? What about the filthy rich people who own all these megachurches nowadays? And what about the longstanding churches like the Mormons and the Catholic Church where their estimated wealth is anywhere between 50-200 billion dollars?
Exactly how much are they worth and precisely how is their wealth being gained and spent? No one can know for sure because they are not required to reveal their financial information. Most convenient for them.
Does this teaching of Jesus in Matthew 19:16-24 apply to any of them?
My question concerns the point Jesus was making about rich men entering the kingdom of heaven.
I only look at Jesus to see he wasn't talking about money. I think Jesus was the richest man who ever lived, yet he gave it all up laying down his life so we can have life through his precious blood. WOW.
I'm going to butt in and say that Christians and non-Christians alike have used the term "original" loosely in reference to the existing Greek manuscripts, and no one is suggesting these were the first manuscripts written by the original authors. We have copies of copies of copies, and while there are hundreds of discrepancies, most are minor. I wouldn't get hung up on the use of the word "original" in this context.
I don't know how Hampson is using the term "original" (which he does 15 times in the article) because he does not specifically say. One of his quote is "We are very fortunate – in English – to have access to so many translations. And equally fortunate to have ready access to the original texts."
Maybe if he is going to use it, he should explain what he means by it.
I only look at Jesus to see he wasn't talking about money. I think Jesus was the richest man who ever lived, yet he gave it all up laying down his life so we can have life through his precious blood. WOW.
That's nice oldiesman, but Jesus wasn't talking about himself in Matthew 19:16-24. Jesus knew perfectly well what was awaiting him after his death, resurrection and ascension - one could say that was what motivated him.
Heb 12:2 Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.
"Concerning your reference to wolves above, you did not suggest in this case that the word should go untranslated but that it should just be translated “jackal.” For example: Genesis 49:27, ““Benjamin shall ravin as a wolf jackal: in the morning he shall devour the prey, and at night he shall divide the spoil.” "
[The point I was making there is that MIStranslating something is serious business. So, putting a word there because we absolutely have to put a word there can cause a big problem for someone. So, when choosing what to do when translating, it's a lot harder than it looks.]
"Concerning “anothen,” leaving it out would make the verse read as follows: John 3:3 Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Two problems with this is that it’s stating the obvious and also Jesus does go on to describe being born two ways – born of the flesh and born of the spirit.
I don't see the big problem with this Greek word. Any disagreement with “anothen” seems to be whether it means anew or again. “Anew” implies something made new usually as an improvement over the old while “again” implies something happening a second (or more) time.
Nicodemus obviously took “anothen” to mean born “again” as shown in his reply about entering the womb a “second time.” Since this was not what Jesus meant, he explains to Nicodemus the two kinds of births – to be born of the flesh and born of the spirit. The spirit would fit with “anothen” meaning “anew” as it is an improvement over being born of the flesh. "
[A) You missed the previous discussion, sorry. What I proved was translating it with a placeholder word that meant nothing didn't change the verse itself because Nicodemus was responding to a man being born when he was old- a MAN being born, not a baby.
BTW, the discussion of the Greek word was not with "anew" vs "again", which are largely synonymous in this context. A quick check with a concordance would show that the word "anothen" in all its usages/consistently supports rendering the word "FROM ABOVE" and not "again". So, did Nicodemus understand the word "anothen" or its Aramaic equivalent to be "again/anew" or "from above"? For the sake of that account, it actually didn't matter which he was told because he jumped on the meaning of the rest of the sentence, and he could have been told either or neither and he wasn't listening.
In that instance, I didn't leave the word out- I left it untranslated or even unintelligible, and the meaning was retained. Humans often pick and choose what they hear in a sentence, skip something else, and react. Often, that means they skipped the important part, and often will later say they were never told the rest of the sentence. Looking at the account, it seems to me Nicodemus did exactly that. Humans are largely the same here and now and in Nicodemus' time.
If you want to get into this account more, we probably should open another thread.]
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"Am I missing something here? What "original" do you and Hampson think exists?
The Greek word “kunarion,” meaning “a small dog,” is used only 4 times in the NT, and they are all found in the account of the Canaanite woman in Matthew and Mark.
Now the other Greek word for dog, kuon, meaning a dog that is universally despised in the East, is clearly used that way 5 times in the NT. One of those usages is in Matthew 7:6 which is something like what Jesus said to the woman. It is, “Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.” Similar ideas but 2 different Greek word used for “dogs.” I'm interested in why this is. "
[I've been spending the last decade or so with the subject "translating between 2 languages" being something I can't avoid. (I don't live in an English-speaking country, which means I'm either studying the other language, dealing with things not from here, or dealing with translations, in nearly every case.) I've seen a number of people work hard to translate between 2 modern languages with some common roots, and sometimes they conclude that something can't be translated across to English or from English! Some things are idiosyncratic to a language, to a culture, to a dialect of a language.
For those who doubt this, there's a song that runs almost 9 minutes long, in Spanish. Sometimes subtitles are available in English. "Que dificil es hablar en Español", or "Oh, how hard it is to speak Spanish!" The song is written by native Spanish speakers. The song is written from the perspective of a US citizen who tries to study Spanish, who studies one dialect of Spanish from one country, then discovers he has to learn Spanish all over again if he visits a different Spanish-speaking country. Expressions that are clear and innocent in one dialect become insults in another, and he's chased out of a greengrocer when he tries to ask about the fruit they carry. Some words are innocent in one dialect, and in another, will get you in trouble. Some words mean different things in different countries, sometimes MANY of them. (The word "chucho" has so many different localized meanings that he was able to construct a sentence using all of them, and the sentence was impenetrable without a word-for-word breakdown.) All of that is about differences between dialects of CONTEMPORARY SPANISH, spoken right now in different countries, often neighboring countries.
Why did I bring this up? For the benefit of anyone who missed the point, I'll spell it out.
Translation work can be very difficult. Even simple prepositions can be a problem, and radically change a sentence with one wrong preposition. Going from one dialect used RIGHT NOW in a language to the same language used RIGHT NOW in a neighboring country with a different dialect can be very difficult. Going back and forth between English and Spanish can be very tricky. I've heard of one tourist who tried to ask directions and offended the local because they missed a connotation that was missing from their language. (In English, "you" is one word, singular or plural, regardless of who "you" is/are. In Spanish, there are at least THREE words for "you" that are used. One is for the plural of either singular. The other 2 usages are singular, referring to one person. But be careful which one you use. If you use "usted", you're being formal. It's good for business meetings and for strangers. If you use "tú", you´re being casual. It's good for friends and people you're trying to consider friends (i.e. in a bar, meeting someone.) There's a word in Spanish that doesn't have ANY direct English translation that relates to this- "tutear". That means to use the informal "tú" with someone when you should have used "usted." People can easily be offended if they hear you do that- although most will cut a tourist slack if they realize the tourist just has trouble trying to use the language. I made a joke once, here. I asked someone if I could greet their dog. They agreed. I squatted down, petted the dog, and talked softly to the dog- to indicate by tone how I was friendly. I referred to the dog using "tú". When I stood up, somewhat tongue in cheek and smirking, I apologized to the dog owner for "tuteando" the dog. After all, I'd just met his dog, and there I was, using the familiar when addressing him. He (the dog owner) accepted my apology, also smirking. The dog didn't care either way. Still, being polite rarely hurts, and it was funny at the time.
It appears to me that Hampson has actually put in the work. You know, like vpw claimed to have done sometimes, but in Hampson's case, for real. So, the man spent some time formally studying Koine Greek. I'm fairly confident neither you or I formally studied Koine Greek. I know enough to get by if I use a concordance, interlinear and lexicon, but that's not the same as formal study. He seems to be making a point that, in Koine Greek, there's a big difference between using "kuon" and "kunarion" in a sentence. I've seen enough MIStranslating between English and Spanish to believe it's true. He said the difference is in the CONNOTATION of "kunarion." It doesn't have the same connotations as "dogs" would in modern English. I'm well aware that translating between modern English and modern Spanish has problems of exactly that type, where nearly synonymous words mean different things. I got into a whole discussion years ago discussing the differences between the words for "grandmother" in English and in Spanish. They may not matter at all to you, but if you were being referred to as "grandmother" in both languages, you'd want to know that the "correct" word was used in each language. (A native Spanish speaker settled on "Abuelita" for Spanish, and "Grandma" in English. "Abuelita" literally is a diminutive of "abuela", grandmother, but has a CONNOTATION of more familiarity than "abuela." I also had to try to articulate the difference between "grandma" and "granny" to a non-English speaker, which took 2 people to explain, since the denotation is the same but the connotations are not, not exactly.) So, in Spanish, making a diminutive of a word doesn't always connote a diminutive of something, a different meaning can be conveyed. Hampson said the same thing happens when switching from "kuon" (an insult) to "kunarion." Based on my misadventures in Spanish, I'm ready to believe that. (In one localization, a singular word that's a strong insult stops becoming an insult when used in a plural diminutive and applied to a swarm of children fleeing school at the end of the school day.) I'm aware that, in Japanese, there's a word that normally translates to "idiot" and doesn't mean that when, say, a girl uses it when addressing a boy she's dating- the context making it clear she doesn't mean the same thing. If I knew all sorts of languages, I'm sure I could cite many more examples across the spectrum.
So, if a word, translated directly, denotes the same thing literally but the CONNOTATION is completely different, what do you do? From what I've seen, experts don't translate it directly. In some cases, they go around translating it quite a distance. That's just Spanish to English. Hampson was saying that the same thing can happen in Koine Greek, and I'm prepared to believe him. Then the question becomes, what DO we do in this instance? Facing several options, none of which are optimal, he picked the one that was least problematic. I followed him through his steps, and I think he was reasonable. It might have been done in exactly the same way if it was a problematic words in Spanish being translated to English- or vice versa. ]
"Concerning your reference to wolves above, you did not suggest in this case that the word should go untranslated but that it should just be translated “jackal.” For example: Genesis 49:27, ““Benjamin shall ravin as a wolf jackal: in the morning he shall devour the prey, and at night he shall divide the spoil.” "
[The point I was making there is that MIStranslating something is serious business. So, putting a word there because we absolutely have to put a word there can cause a big problem for someone. So, when choosing what to do when translating, it's a lot harder than it looks.]
"Concerning “anothen,” leaving it out would make the verse read as follows: John 3:3 Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Two problems with this is that it’s stating the obvious and also Jesus does go on to describe being born two ways – born of the flesh and born of the spirit.
I don't see the big problem with this Greek word. Any disagreement with “anothen” seems to be whether it means anew or again. “Anew” implies something made new usually as an improvement over the old while “again” implies something happening a second (or more) time.
Nicodemus obviously took “anothen” to mean born “again” as shown in his reply about entering the womb a “second time.” Since this was not what Jesus meant, he explains to Nicodemus the two kinds of births – to be born of the flesh and born of the spirit. The spirit would fit with “anothen” meaning “anew” as it is an improvement over being born of the flesh. "
[A) You missed the previous discussion, sorry. What I proved was translating it with a placeholder word that meant nothing didn't change the verse itself because Nicodemus was responding to a man being born when he was old- a MAN being born, not a baby.
BTW, the discussion of the Greek word was not with "anew" vs "again", which are largely synonymous in this context. A quick check with a concordance would show that the word "anothen" in all its usages/consistently supports rendering the word "FROM ABOVE" and not "again". So, did Nicodemus understand the word "anothen" or its Aramaic equivalent to be "again/anew" or "from above"? For the sake of that account, it actually didn't matter which he was told because he jumped on the meaning of the rest of the sentence, and he could have been told either or neither and he wasn't listening.
In that instance, I didn't leave the word out- I left it untranslated or even unintelligible, and the meaning was retained. Humans often pick and choose what they hear in a sentence, skip something else, and react. Often, that means they skipped the important part, and often will later say they were never told the rest of the sentence. Looking at the account, it seems to me Nicodemus did exactly that. Humans are largely the same here and now and in Nicodemus' time.
If you want to get into this account more, we probably should open another thread.]
--------------------------------------------
"Am I missing something here? What "original" do you and Hampson think exists?
The Greek word “kunarion,” meaning “a small dog,” is used only 4 times in the NT, and they are all found in the account of the Canaanite woman in Matthew and Mark.
Now the other Greek word for dog, kuon, meaning a dog that is universally despised in the East, is clearly used that way 5 times in the NT. One of those usages is in Matthew 7:6 which is something like what Jesus said to the woman. It is, “Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.” Similar ideas but 2 different Greek word used for “dogs.” I'm interested in why this is. "
[I've been spending the last decade or so with the subject "translating between 2 languages" being something I can't avoid. (I don't live in an English-speaking country, which means I'm either studying the other language, dealing with things not from here, or dealing with translations, in nearly every case.) I've seen a number of people work hard to translate between 2 modern languages with some common roots, and sometimes they conclude that something can't be translated across to English or from English! Some things are idiosyncratic to a language, to a culture, to a dialect of a language.
For those who doubt this, there's a song that runs almost 9 minutes long, in Spanish. Sometimes subtitles are available in English. "Que dificil es hablar en Español", or "Oh, how hard it is to speak Spanish!" The song is written by native Spanish speakers. The song is written from the perspective of a US citizen who tries to study Spanish, who studies one dialect of Spanish from one country, then discovers he has to learn Spanish all over again if he visits a different Spanish-speaking country. Expressions that are clear and innocent in one dialect become insults in another, and he's chased out of a greengrocer when he tries to ask about the fruit they carry. Some words are innocent in one dialect, and in another, will get you in trouble. Some words mean different things in different countries, sometimes MANY of them. (The word "chucho" has so many different localized meanings that he was able to construct a sentence using all of them, and the sentence was impenetrable without a word-for-word breakdown.) All of that is about differences between dialects of CONTEMPORARY SPANISH, spoken right now in different countries, often neighboring countries.
Why did I bring this up? For the benefit of anyone who missed the point, I'll spell it out.
Translation work can be very difficult. Even simple prepositions can be a problem, and radically change a sentence with one wrong preposition. Going from one dialect used RIGHT NOW in a language to the same language used RIGHT NOW in a neighboring country with a different dialect can be very difficult. Going back and forth between English and Spanish can be very tricky. I've heard of one tourist who tried to ask directions and offended the local because they missed a connotation that was missing from their language. (In English, "you" is one word, singular or plural, regardless of who "you" is/are. In Spanish, there are at least THREE words for "you" that are used. One is for the plural of either singular. The other 2 usages are singular, referring to one person. But be careful which one you use. If you use "usted", you're being formal. It's good for business meetings and for strangers. If you use "tú", you´re being casual. It's good for friends and people you're trying to consider friends (i.e. in a bar, meeting someone.) There's a word in Spanish that doesn't have ANY direct English translation that relates to this- "tutear". That means to use the informal "tú" with someone when you should have used "usted." People can easily be offended if they hear you do that- although most will cut a tourist slack if they realize the tourist just has trouble trying to use the language. I made a joke once, here. I asked someone if I could greet their dog. They agreed. I squatted down, petted the dog, and talked softly to the dog- to indicate by tone how I was friendly. I referred to the dog using "tú". When I stood up, somewhat tongue in cheek and smirking, I apologized to the dog owner for "tuteando" the dog. After all, I'd just met his dog, and there I was, using the familiar when addressing him. He (the dog owner) accepted my apology, also smirking. The dog didn't care either way. Still, being polite rarely hurts, and it was funny at the time.
It appears to me that Hampson has actually put in the work. You know, like vpw claimed to have done sometimes, but in Hampson's case, for real. So, the man spent some time formally studying Koine Greek. I'm fairly confident neither you or I formally studied Koine Greek. I know enough to get by if I use a concordance, interlinear and lexicon, but that's not the same as formal study. He seems to be making a point that, in Koine Greek, there's a big difference between using "kuon" and "kunarion" in a sentence. I've seen enough MIStranslating between English and Spanish to believe it's true. He said the difference is in the CONNOTATION of "kunarion." It doesn't have the same connotations as "dogs" would in modern English. I'm well aware that translating between modern English and modern Spanish has problems of exactly that type, where nearly synonymous words mean different things. I got into a whole discussion years ago discussing the differences between the words for "grandmother" in English and in Spanish. They may not matter at all to you, but if you were being referred to as "grandmother" in both languages, you'd want to know that the "correct" word was used in each language. (A native Spanish speaker settled on "Abuelita" for Spanish, and "Grandma" in English. "Abuelita" literally is a diminutive of "abuela", grandmother, but has a CONNOTATION of more familiarity than "abuela." I also had to try to articulate the difference between "grandma" and "granny" to a non-English speaker, which took 2 people to explain, since the denotation is the same but the connotations are not, not exactly.) So, in Spanish, making a diminutive of a word doesn't always connote a diminutive of something, a different meaning can be conveyed. Hampson said the same thing happens when switching from "kuon" (an insult) to "kunarion." Based on my misadventures in Spanish, I'm ready to believe that. (In one localization, a singular word that's a strong insult stops becoming an insult when used in a plural diminutive and applied to a swarm of children fleeing school at the end of the school day.) I'm aware that, in Japanese, there's a word that normally translates to "idiot" and doesn't mean that when, say, a girl uses it when addressing a boy she's dating- the context making it clear she doesn't mean the same thing. If I knew all sorts of languages, I'm sure I could cite many more examples across the spectrum.
So, if a word, translated directly, denotes the same thing literally but the CONNOTATION is completely different, what do you do? From what I've seen, experts don't translate it directly. In some cases, they go around translating it quite a distance. That's just Spanish to English. Hampson was saying that the same thing can happen in Koine Greek, and I'm prepared to believe him. Then the question becomes, what DO we do in this instance? Facing several options, none of which are optimal, he picked the one that was least problematic. I followed him through his steps, and I think he was reasonable. It might have been done in exactly the same way if it was a problematic words in Spanish being translated to English- or vice versa. ]
You make important points regarding the inherent problems with translating from one language to another which then become even greater when the language is an ancient one or from almost two thousands years ago.
Post edited due to a concern about the question I asked.
[A) You missed the previous discussion, sorry. What I proved was translating it with a placeholder word that meant nothing didn't change the verse itself because Nicodemus was responding to a man being born when he was old- a MAN being born, not a baby.
BTW, the discussion of the Greek word was not with "anew" vs "again", which are largely synonymous in this context. A quick check with a concordance would show that the word "anothen" in all its usages/consistently supports rendering the word "FROM ABOVE" and not "again". So, did Nicodemus understand the word "anothen" or its Aramaic equivalent to be "again/anew" or "from above"? For the sake of that account, it actually didn't matter which he was told because he jumped on the meaning of the rest of the sentence, and he could have been told either or neither and he wasn't listening. (Underlining is by Charity)
I tend to rely heavily on Bible Hub for the meaning of words which I know is limiting. Here is where I got the definition of "anothen."
Thayer's Greek Lexicon
STRONGS NT 509: ἄνωθεν
ἄνωθεν (ἄνω), adverb;
a. from above, from a higher place: ἀπό ἄνωθεν (Winer's Grammar, § 50, 7 N. 1), Matthew 27:51 (Tdf. omits ἀπό); Mark 15:38; ἐκ τῶν ἄνωθεν from the upper part, from the top, John 19:23. Often (also in Greek writings) used of things which come from heaven, or from God as dwelling in heaven: John 3:31; John 19:11; James 1:17; James 3:15, 17.
b. from the first: Luke 1:3; then, from the beginning on, from the very first: Acts 26:5. Hence,
c. anew, over again, indicating repetition (a use somewhat rare, but wrongly denied by many (Meyer among them; cf. his commentary on John and Galatians as below)): John 3:3, 7 ἄνωθεν γεννηθῆναι, where others explain it from above, i. e. from heaven. But, according to this explanation, Nicodemus ought to have wondered how it was possible for anyone to be born from heaven; but this he did not say;...Galatians 4:9 (again, since ye were in bondage once before).
You can read the whole answer for (c) in the link below.
Regarding the translation of "anothen". As per your link, there are exactly 13 occurrences of "anothen" in the Greek New Testament. If I take as a given that only one meaning (one general one or one specific one) should be used for translation, then it's not fair to translate them selectively as different concepts. It can't be both "from above" in some places and "anew" in other places. The concepts are different. ("Again" and "anew" are the same thing, more or less, but they're not the same as "from above" no matter WHAT Thayer said.) Naturally, it's possible for both translations to be WRONG and contradict, but only one of them could be correct. A look down all 13 usages shows that more than 1/2 of them can't possibly be "again" or "anew" and have to be "from above" if they're either definition. In one case, it may be a bit of a stretch, and 12 usages can easily be "from above." I did my own work, long ago, (1989), and concluded "anothen" was "from above." Looking at your link, I conclude I was right when I concluded that, and Thayer made an error.
The camel/rope thing. Lamsa had it as "rope" in his Bible. The Aramaic Interlinear twi put out had it as "rope." Naturally, one can show suspicion on both sources, as it's possible both were, ah, compromised. But I compared the words side by side in my college library. They had a copy of the book "The Aramaic Origin of the Four Gospels." I eyeballed both words carefully and could not find a difference between the two. Most people can simply conclude that it was hyperbole and get the meaning, and, either way, it is still hyperbole. Neither a rope nor a camel can fit in the eye of a needle, and with man, this is impossible. That was the point regardless, although I prefer having a correct translation either way.
"The most concerning and obvious question in all of this is:
Why did an all-knowing, all-wise and all-powerful divine being,...."
[I was under the impression that this wasn't going to be one of those threads. If this is going to be one of those threads, I'll just see myself out. I came to discuss content and translation, not engage in an angry shouting match that won't convince anyone of anything and will only waste time. If this thread is going to change into one of those threads now that I am in it, I'm not sticking around.]
"The most concerning and obvious question in all of this is:
Why did an all-knowing, all-wise and all-powerful divine being,...."
[I was under the impression that this wasn't going to be one of those threads. If this is going to be one of those threads, I'll just see myself out. I came to discuss content and translation, not engage in an angry shouting match that won't convince anyone of anything and will only waste time. If this thread is going to change into one of those threads now that I am in it, I'm not sticking around.]
You guessed in error what my tone was in asking that question - I am not angry, just bewildered. But you are correct in the point you made. If I can delete or edit the post, I will and will put in in a different thread.
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Nathan_Jr
Yeah, I don’t think you were intentionally trying to deceive or entrap, but your tone could be seen as contentious and disingenuous. It’s the tone and style. Believers don’t want to engage with it, I
Nathan_Jr
Well, Mark didn’t make the same claim that Luke made about an accurate account. Ancient “historians” did history differently than historians do it today. I don’t think they were as concerned with accu
WordWolf
[WordWolf in boldface and brackets] "Concerning your reference to wolves above, you did not suggest in this case that the word should go untranslated but that it should just be translated “jackal
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WordWolf
*peeks into the thread cautiously*
I'm not in favor of discussion by video link or otherwise, and prefer we discuss directly, but I know I'm in the minority there.
As for oldiesman's link, it led to a page I, on the whole, didn't find particularly useful.....however, I followed a number of the links and found a single link that I found useful.
https://viamedia.news/2023/09/20/jesus-did-not-call-a-woman-a-dog/
He takes a while to get there- it's a bit like reading one of my expository posts- but I thought the answer was good enough that it was work a link. I won't do the writer the injustice of quoting a relevant snippet because the journey was as much a part of the answer as the direct explanation. So, even I can make exceptions.
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Nathan_Jr
Read Mark in light of Paul. Who influenced whom?
Paul preached Christ crucified. Some have argued Mark was written to fill the massive void left by the Pauline corpus: the life of Jesus.
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Charity
The first part of the AI Overview says, "The woman is persistent in her request to have her daughter healed. She is unafraid to bother Jesus and trusts in his goodness and sense of humor."
I agree that she was unafraid to bother Jesus most likely because she was in desperate need of help for her daughter. Her pleading with Jesus to show her mercy may mean she trusts that he will do so, but it could also imply that she is hoping he will do so. My question is where in the story is there any sense of humor displayed? It's kind of a weird thing to suggest.
Matthew's account gives more details than Mark's. The words in brackets come from the Greek definitions of the words they follow. Matthew 15:21Then Jesus went thence, and departed into the coasts of Tyre and Sidon. 22And, behold, a woman of Canaan came out of the same coasts, and cried (often conveying strong emotion or urgency) unto him, saying, Have mercy (compassion) on me, O Lord, thou Son of David; my daughter is grievously (severely, cruelly) vexed (possessed) with a devil. 23But he answered her not a word. And his disciples came and besought him, saying, Send her away; for she crieth (often conveying strong emotion or urgency) after us. 24But he answered and said, I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel. 25Then came she and worshipped him (fell at his feet), saying, Lord, help me. 26But he answered and said, It is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it to dogs. 27And she said, Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters' table. 28Then Jesus answered and said unto her, O woman, great is thy faith: be it unto thee even as thou wilt. And her daughter was made whole from that very hour.
The AI Overview of Jesus's response is: "Jesus's words can seem harsh, but he is testing the woman's faith and commitment to her request."
I don't think it was a test since the text doesn't say that it was. So, what did she do to make Jesus say she had great faith? It wasn't her persistent crying out as she followed him or that she called him Lord and the son of David or that she clearly made known her need because after all that, he answered her not a word and then proceeded to give her a reason why her daughter should not be healed. It also wasn't that she fell at his feet and again asked for help because he just doubled down on his reason after that. It was only after she came up with a common-sense loophole to Jesus' reason - mind you, it was one that required her to play the role of a dog - that he was impressed enough to heal her daughter. Who would have guessed that this was what it would take? That's my problem with the idea of needing to have faith - I've come to find it a guessing game as to what you should do or say, and it all doesn't matter anyway because prayers are answered by God at random.
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Charity
Thanks WordWolf - I'll look at what he has to say.
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Charity
It is questionable as to why the gospels were not written until years after Paul wrote his major letters to the church in which he defined what Christianity was all about. And yes, having questions and looking for their answers is a good thing.
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Charity
I think It is a very interesting piece of writing that has good ideas for discussion. I'll bring one up when I get the chance. Thanks again for sharing it.
Even the link for The Times clergy survey at the end brings up relevant points right from the start (which is all I've read at this point).
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Charity
I find it interesting that Michael Hampson focuses solely on the misogynistic implication of calling the woman a dog. He thinks that nine-tenth of its harshness would be reduced if it was a male who had come to Jesus in this account.
I mostly agree with this, and the fact that Jesus never said anything of the sort to the Roman centurion who wanted Jesus to heal his servant gives some credence to Hampson’s point of view here.
His conclusion is that “the word kynarioi is untranslatable” and writes, ”And that is why there is no place in the English rendering of Matthew 15.21-28 for the d-word: because the d-word has a misogynistic nuance in English that is not there in the original Greek.” (Not sure how he knows this as there are no original mss.)
His solution is simply to cut out the phrases where “dog” is used when teaching these verses, and what remains (to quote him) “is enough” to make known Jesus' point. What is left then is "Jesus said, ‘It is not right to take food away from the children.’ She said, ‘Yes, Lord, but surely there will be crumbs that fall from the table.’"
He goes further though to say that "any translation that still uses that word is – well, frankly, for virtually all purposes, and certainly for reading aloud in church, just wrong" and that doing so is a "serious error in translation, with terrible consequences."
However, I don't think ignoring "the elephant in the room" strengthens anyone's conviction to know and understand "the truth."
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WordWolf
"However, I don't think ignoring "the elephant in the room" strengthens anyone's conviction to know and understand "the truth." "
Not trying to be difficult here, trying to discuss. I'm not sure what you're referring to as "the elephant in the room" here. If you'll tell me what it is, I'll try to address it rather than ignore it. (Not that I'm that writer, but I am here to discuss.)
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Charity
You might have misunderstood me. I was only speaking of Hampson ignoring the problem - not you. The "elephant in the room" is that the word "dog" is in the Greek text for Matthew 15:26-27, and Hampson's solution to ignore them or have translations delete them from the bible seems to be promoting willful ignorance (IOW - burying one's head in the sand).
Do you think this is a good enough way to deal with these scriptures?
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WordWolf
"You might have misunderstood me. I was only speaking of Hampson ignoring the problem - not you."
Right, but since he's not here, and we're the ones discussing, and I brought it up, I thought it was incumbent upon me to address whatever your concern was.
"The "elephant in the room" is that the word "dog" is in the Greek text for Matthew 15:26-27, and Hampson's solution to ignore them or have translations delete them from the bible seems to be promoting willful ignorance (IOW - burying one's head in the sand)."
OK, I can address that.
"...Hampson's solution to ignore them or have translations delete them from the bible seems to be promoting willful ignorance (IOW - burying one's head in the sand).
Do you think this is a good enough way to deal with these scriptures?"
The first thing I agree with is that rushing to an answer doesn't do this justice. So, a flat "yes" or "no" here is no good. (Have I stopped beating my wife?)
In general, and as a guiding principle, I tend to think the primary goal of translation is to correctly translate, which sounds redundant, but actually is not, since that's what we're discussing. I tend to think a translator should not leave things untranslated.
I'm also well aware that incorrect translations are problems.
If you read any English version I'm aware of, you'll find the word "wolves" used in a negative way, as something feared. I object to the incorrect translations. The animal in question was the JACKAL, which was native to Palestine and the Middle East (the wolf was not.) It's as unfair to render it "wolf" as it is to render it "jaguar"- knowing that they're native to the Americas and nowhere else. What does it matter? It mattered to the real wolves. People in Europe hunted them down, partly because they were falsely correlated with evil workings. (Partly for other reasons also.)
I'm also aware that sometimes a problematic word is best left untranslated- if you want to understand what was going on. We previously discussed once the usage of the word that is, in the Greek, "anothen." Jesus told Nicodemus that unless a man be born anothen, he couldn't see the kingdom of God. Much wrangling has been made of what the Aramaic did or didn't say, of what this word means here, but ultimately, this word was not critical to understanding Nicodemus' reaction to Jesus. Nicodemus heard Jesus, and asked how a man could be born when he's old? Nicodemus didn't pay any attention to the word "anothen" there, just on the (adult) man being born despite already being an adult. In that case, a lot of arguing about something that didn't matter could be skipped by not translating "anothen" there because it was non-critical to understanding the account. Do I prefer leaving anything untranslated? No, but I'm aware that sometimes, we have limited options, and I'd prefer to pick the least-objectionable option out of those available, if I must pick at all.
So, do I think that leaving a word untranslated is allowable at all, and an option at least some of the time? Yes, because I've seen it work before. The example I just gave is sufficient for me.
The next question would be- do I think this particular situation can only be served by leaving a word untranslated? That's a much more specific question, and one that can be addressed more specifically.
Hampson made his case that there was no clear English word or phrase that could translate this word, retaining the original meaning while not injecting an additional meaning into it due to connotations in English. I think he made a sufficient case. As in the example I gave, the account is fully coherent without it, and makes sense. If it's included, the only "benefits" are to add something problematic that wasn't there to begin with, and the additional "benefit" of 100% completion of translating everything. I find that a goal more worth achieving in video games than in translations, where the answers are not always so clear.
Was there an incident? Yes. But keeping in a poorly-translated word means we lose what happened while everyone fixates on the meaning that was never there to begin with.
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I'm aware of a different incident where a translation COULD be corrected, but the wrong word means people fixate on something that doesn't exist.
"It's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven." I wish I had a dollar for every time someone taught about the IMAGINARY gate entering Jerusalem called "the eye of the needle". When passing through this IMAGINARY gate, imaginary merchants would need to remove the imaginary trading goods from their imaginary camels, then get the camels to scoot through this tiny gate, then reload them. No city would put up with such a restriction for one moment longer than it needed to. ("We've been clearing the rubble from that earthquake. The only way to get in now is very narrow. We won't have that widened for another day or so.") Residents of Jerusalem weren't idiots. Any entrance like that would discourage trade and slow down trade. (Find me one Jew in any country in any century who is in favor of hindering business deals.) So, people fixate on this thing about a camel passing through the eye of a needle.
But it's an incorrect translation. In Aramaic, the word for "camel" and the word for "rope" are effectively homonyms. (I examined the words side by side, and could not see any difference in their spellings.) So, passing a ROPE through the eye of a needle. The entire sentence was about something physically impossible, and is much easier to picture with rope. If it was a single thread, it could pass. As a rope, it was the right shape, but far too large to pass.
Mind you, if we had no way of knowing this, if one were actually vague about what was passing through the eye of a needle, one would still get the same meaning- something clearly impossible. There are people who say that it meant "camel" but the meaning of the sentence was something literally impossible. So, despite an incorrect translation, they get to the point anyway.
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I disagree with the characterization of Hampson as either "promoting willful ignorance" or "burying one's head in the sand." He's heading off a manufactured controversy that wasn't in the original, and staying focused on what the passage was actually about. I find that the opposite of "willful ignorance".
I suppose, if my whole reason for caring about this passage was in using the incorrect translation to make a point the original never made, all to make it look like the original had a problem it never had, then this approach might indeed look like "burying one's head in the sand." It certainly would take all the fun out of complaining about and criticizing the passage over what it never said in the original.
Myself, I blame the translators more than anyone else.
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Charity
Concerning your reference to wolves above, you did not suggest in this case that the word should go untranslated but that it should just be translated “jackal.” For example: Genesis 49:27, ““Benjamin shall ravin as a
wolfjackal: in the morning he shall devour the prey, and at night he shall divide the spoil.”Concerning “anothen,” leaving it out would make the verse read as follows: John 3:3 Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Two problems with this is that it’s stating the obvious and also Jesus does go on to describe being born two ways – born of the flesh and born of the spirit.
I don't see the big problem with this Greek word. Any disagreement with “anothen” seems to be whether it means anew or again. “Anew” implies something made new usually as an improvement over the old while “again” implies something happening a second (or more) time.
Nicodemus obviously took “anothen” to mean born “again” as shown in his reply about entering the womb a “second time.” Since this was not what Jesus meant, he explains to Nicodemus the two kinds of births – to be born of the flesh and born of the spirit. The spirit would fit with “anothen” meaning “anew” as it is an improvement over being born of the flesh.
The Gospel of John which talks about being born again was written decades after Paul’s epistles to the church and Peter’s first epistle.
Therefore, the church already had been taught by Paul that the saints "are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you" in Romans 8 as well as them putting off the old man and putting on the new man in Ephesians 4. 1 Peter 1:23 uses the phrase “born again” when it compares being born of corruptible seed called the flesh in verse 24 with being born of incorruptible [seed] which supposedly means being born of the spirit.
Nicodemus told Jesus that no one could do the miracles he did “except God be with him.” Jesus’s reply to this statement appears to explain to Nicodemus in what way God was with him and that was because he was born of the spirit. Was this not a reference to what happened when the dove descended from heaven upon Jesus when he was baptized and with God saying, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased?"
The whole context of John 3:1-8 centers around the word "anothen" because it refers to being born of the spirit - a doctrine that is most prevalent in the NT. I can't see how leaving it out is beneficial.
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Charity
Am I missing something here? What "original" do you and Hampson think exists?
The Greek word “kunarion,” meaning “a small dog,” is used only 4 times in the NT, and they are all found in the account of the Canaanite woman in Matthew and Mark.
Now the other Greek word for dog, kuon, meaning a dog that is universally despised in the East, is clearly used that way 5 times in the NT. One of those usages is in Matthew 7:6 which is something like what Jesus said to the woman. It is, “Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.” Similar ideas but 2 different Greek word used for “dogs.” I'm interested in why this is.
Finally, in order to remove this d-word, Hampson suggests the passage should read as follows:
Jesus said, ‘It is not right to take food away from the children.’
She said, ‘Yes, Lord, but surely there will be crumbs that fall from the table.’
However, he does say in his article about that translation “Having to eat waste, and having to crawl under the table to collect it,is humiliation enough.” So with or without the d-word, the woman is feeling humiliated. It may not be what the whole passage is about, but it is still part of the passage.
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Raf
I'm going to butt in and say that Christians and non-Christians alike have used the term "original" loosely in reference to the existing Greek manuscripts, and no one is suggesting these were the first manuscripts written by the original authors. We have copies of copies of copies, and while there are hundreds of discrepancies, most are minor. I wouldn't get hung up on the use of the word "original" in this context.
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Charity
Thanks for bringing this one up as I had never heard of the camel/rope issue before. I’ve looked at a couple of websites which agree mostly with what you shared here.
The websites confirm that there is no evidence of the existence of a small gate in the walls of Jerusalem known as the “eye of the needle” where a man could barely fit through, let alone a camel.
Could Jesus have been using the figure of speech “hyperbole” if the word he used actually meant a camel? It makes for a more interesting image but like you say, a rope is definitely more logical than a camel.
My question concerns the point Jesus was making about rich men entering the kingdom of heaven. Do you think wealthy men in the Old Testament, such as the most wealthiest of all - Solomon, fit into what Jesus is saying? What about the filthy rich people who own all these megachurches nowadays? And what about the longstanding churches like the Mormons and the Catholic Church where their estimated wealth is anywhere between 50-200 billion dollars?
Exactly how much are they worth and precisely how is their wealth being gained and spent? No one can know for sure because they are not required to reveal their financial information. Most convenient for them.
Does this teaching of Jesus in Matthew 19:16-24 apply to any of them?
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oldiesman
I only look at Jesus to see he wasn't talking about money. I think Jesus was the richest man who ever lived, yet he gave it all up laying down his life so we can have life through his precious blood. WOW.
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Charity
I don't know how Hampson is using the term "original" (which he does 15 times in the article) because he does not specifically say. One of his quote is "We are very fortunate – in English – to have access to so many translations. And equally fortunate to have ready access to the original texts."
Maybe if he is going to use it, he should explain what he means by it.
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Charity
That's nice oldiesman, but Jesus wasn't talking about himself in Matthew 19:16-24. Jesus knew perfectly well what was awaiting him after his death, resurrection and ascension - one could say that was what motivated him.
Heb 12:2 Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.
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WordWolf
[WordWolf in boldface and brackets]
"Concerning your reference to wolves above, you did not suggest in this case that the word should go untranslated but that it should just be translated “jackal.” For example: Genesis 49:27, ““Benjamin shall ravin as a
wolfjackal: in the morning he shall devour the prey, and at night he shall divide the spoil.” "[The point I was making there is that MIStranslating something is serious business. So, putting a word there because we absolutely have to put a word there can cause a big problem for someone. So, when choosing what to do when translating, it's a lot harder than it looks.]
"Concerning “anothen,” leaving it out would make the verse read as follows: John 3:3 Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Two problems with this is that it’s stating the obvious and also Jesus does go on to describe being born two ways – born of the flesh and born of the spirit.
I don't see the big problem with this Greek word. Any disagreement with “anothen” seems to be whether it means anew or again. “Anew” implies something made new usually as an improvement over the old while “again” implies something happening a second (or more) time.
Nicodemus obviously took “anothen” to mean born “again” as shown in his reply about entering the womb a “second time.” Since this was not what Jesus meant, he explains to Nicodemus the two kinds of births – to be born of the flesh and born of the spirit. The spirit would fit with “anothen” meaning “anew” as it is an improvement over being born of the flesh. "
[A) You missed the previous discussion, sorry. What I proved was translating it with a placeholder word that meant nothing didn't change the verse itself because Nicodemus was responding to a man being born when he was old- a MAN being born, not a baby.
BTW, the discussion of the Greek word was not with "anew" vs "again", which are largely synonymous in this context. A quick check with a concordance would show that the word "anothen" in all its usages/consistently supports rendering the word "FROM ABOVE" and not "again". So, did Nicodemus understand the word "anothen" or its Aramaic equivalent to be "again/anew" or "from above"? For the sake of that account, it actually didn't matter which he was told because he jumped on the meaning of the rest of the sentence, and he could have been told either or neither and he wasn't listening.
In that instance, I didn't leave the word out- I left it untranslated or even unintelligible, and the meaning was retained. Humans often pick and choose what they hear in a sentence, skip something else, and react. Often, that means they skipped the important part, and often will later say they were never told the rest of the sentence. Looking at the account, it seems to me Nicodemus did exactly that. Humans are largely the same here and now and in Nicodemus' time.
If you want to get into this account more, we probably should open another thread.]
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"Am I missing something here? What "original" do you and Hampson think exists?
The Greek word “kunarion,” meaning “a small dog,” is used only 4 times in the NT, and they are all found in the account of the Canaanite woman in Matthew and Mark.
Now the other Greek word for dog, kuon, meaning a dog that is universally despised in the East, is clearly used that way 5 times in the NT. One of those usages is in Matthew 7:6 which is something like what Jesus said to the woman. It is, “Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.” Similar ideas but 2 different Greek word used for “dogs.” I'm interested in why this is. "
[I've been spending the last decade or so with the subject "translating between 2 languages" being something I can't avoid. (I don't live in an English-speaking country, which means I'm either studying the other language, dealing with things not from here, or dealing with translations, in nearly every case.) I've seen a number of people work hard to translate between 2 modern languages with some common roots, and sometimes they conclude that something can't be translated across to English or from English! Some things are idiosyncratic to a language, to a culture, to a dialect of a language.
For those who doubt this, there's a song that runs almost 9 minutes long, in Spanish. Sometimes subtitles are available in English. "Que dificil es hablar en Español", or "Oh, how hard it is to speak Spanish!" The song is written by native Spanish speakers. The song is written from the perspective of a US citizen who tries to study Spanish, who studies one dialect of Spanish from one country, then discovers he has to learn Spanish all over again if he visits a different Spanish-speaking country. Expressions that are clear and innocent in one dialect become insults in another, and he's chased out of a greengrocer when he tries to ask about the fruit they carry. Some words are innocent in one dialect, and in another, will get you in trouble. Some words mean different things in different countries, sometimes MANY of them. (The word "chucho" has so many different localized meanings that he was able to construct a sentence using all of them, and the sentence was impenetrable without a word-for-word breakdown.) All of that is about differences between dialects of CONTEMPORARY SPANISH, spoken right now in different countries, often neighboring countries.
Why did I bring this up? For the benefit of anyone who missed the point, I'll spell it out.
Translation work can be very difficult. Even simple prepositions can be a problem, and radically change a sentence with one wrong preposition. Going from one dialect used RIGHT NOW in a language to the same language used RIGHT NOW in a neighboring country with a different dialect can be very difficult. Going back and forth between English and Spanish can be very tricky. I've heard of one tourist who tried to ask directions and offended the local because they missed a connotation that was missing from their language. (In English, "you" is one word, singular or plural, regardless of who "you" is/are. In Spanish, there are at least THREE words for "you" that are used. One is for the plural of either singular. The other 2 usages are singular, referring to one person. But be careful which one you use. If you use "usted", you're being formal. It's good for business meetings and for strangers. If you use "tú", you´re being casual. It's good for friends and people you're trying to consider friends (i.e. in a bar, meeting someone.) There's a word in Spanish that doesn't have ANY direct English translation that relates to this- "tutear". That means to use the informal "tú" with someone when you should have used "usted." People can easily be offended if they hear you do that- although most will cut a tourist slack if they realize the tourist just has trouble trying to use the language. I made a joke once, here. I asked someone if I could greet their dog. They agreed. I squatted down, petted the dog, and talked softly to the dog- to indicate by tone how I was friendly. I referred to the dog using "tú". When I stood up, somewhat tongue in cheek and smirking, I apologized to the dog owner for "tuteando" the dog. After all, I'd just met his dog, and there I was, using the familiar when addressing him. He (the dog owner) accepted my apology, also smirking. The dog didn't care either way. Still, being polite rarely hurts, and it was funny at the time.
It appears to me that Hampson has actually put in the work. You know, like vpw claimed to have done sometimes, but in Hampson's case, for real. So, the man spent some time formally studying Koine Greek. I'm fairly confident neither you or I formally studied Koine Greek. I know enough to get by if I use a concordance, interlinear and lexicon, but that's not the same as formal study. He seems to be making a point that, in Koine Greek, there's a big difference between using "kuon" and "kunarion" in a sentence. I've seen enough MIStranslating between English and Spanish to believe it's true. He said the difference is in the CONNOTATION of "kunarion." It doesn't have the same connotations as "dogs" would in modern English. I'm well aware that translating between modern English and modern Spanish has problems of exactly that type, where nearly synonymous words mean different things. I got into a whole discussion years ago discussing the differences between the words for "grandmother" in English and in Spanish. They may not matter at all to you, but if you were being referred to as "grandmother" in both languages, you'd want to know that the "correct" word was used in each language. (A native Spanish speaker settled on "Abuelita" for Spanish, and "Grandma" in English. "Abuelita" literally is a diminutive of "abuela", grandmother, but has a CONNOTATION of more familiarity than "abuela." I also had to try to articulate the difference between "grandma" and "granny" to a non-English speaker, which took 2 people to explain, since the denotation is the same but the connotations are not, not exactly.) So, in Spanish, making a diminutive of a word doesn't always connote a diminutive of something, a different meaning can be conveyed. Hampson said the same thing happens when switching from "kuon" (an insult) to "kunarion." Based on my misadventures in Spanish, I'm ready to believe that. (In one localization, a singular word that's a strong insult stops becoming an insult when used in a plural diminutive and applied to a swarm of children fleeing school at the end of the school day.) I'm aware that, in Japanese, there's a word that normally translates to "idiot" and doesn't mean that when, say, a girl uses it when addressing a boy she's dating- the context making it clear she doesn't mean the same thing. If I knew all sorts of languages, I'm sure I could cite many more examples across the spectrum.
So, if a word, translated directly, denotes the same thing literally but the CONNOTATION is completely different, what do you do? From what I've seen, experts don't translate it directly. In some cases, they go around translating it quite a distance. That's just Spanish to English. Hampson was saying that the same thing can happen in Koine Greek, and I'm prepared to believe him. Then the question becomes, what DO we do in this instance? Facing several options, none of which are optimal, he picked the one that was least problematic. I followed him through his steps, and I think he was reasonable. It might have been done in exactly the same way if it was a problematic words in Spanish being translated to English- or vice versa. ]
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Charity
You make important points regarding the inherent problems with translating from one language to another which then become even greater when the language is an ancient one or from almost two thousands years ago.
Post edited due to a concern about the question I asked.
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Charity
I tend to rely heavily on Bible Hub for the meaning of words which I know is limiting. Here is where I got the definition of "anothen."
Thayer's Greek Lexicon
STRONGS NT 509: ἄνωθεν
ἄνωθεν (ἄνω), adverb;
a. from above, from a higher place: ἀπό ἄνωθεν (Winer's Grammar, § 50, 7 N. 1), Matthew 27:51 (Tdf. omits ἀπό); Mark 15:38; ἐκ τῶν ἄνωθεν from the upper part, from the top, John 19:23. Often (also in Greek writings) used of things which come from heaven, or from God as dwelling in heaven: John 3:31; John 19:11; James 1:17; James 3:15, 17.
b. from the first: Luke 1:3; then, from the beginning on, from the very first: Acts 26:5. Hence,
c. anew, over again, indicating repetition (a use somewhat rare, but wrongly denied by many (Meyer among them; cf. his commentary on John and Galatians as below)): John 3:3, 7 ἄνωθεν γεννηθῆναι, where others explain it from above, i. e. from heaven. But, according to this explanation, Nicodemus ought to have wondered how it was possible for anyone to be born from heaven; but this he did not say;...Galatians 4:9 (again, since ye were in bondage once before).
You can read the whole answer for (c) in the link below.
"Anothen"
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WordWolf
Regarding the translation of "anothen". As per your link, there are exactly 13 occurrences of "anothen" in the Greek New Testament. If I take as a given that only one meaning (one general one or one specific one) should be used for translation, then it's not fair to translate them selectively as different concepts. It can't be both "from above" in some places and "anew" in other places. The concepts are different. ("Again" and "anew" are the same thing, more or less, but they're not the same as "from above" no matter WHAT Thayer said.) Naturally, it's possible for both translations to be WRONG and contradict, but only one of them could be correct. A look down all 13 usages shows that more than 1/2 of them can't possibly be "again" or "anew" and have to be "from above" if they're either definition. In one case, it may be a bit of a stretch, and 12 usages can easily be "from above." I did my own work, long ago, (1989), and concluded "anothen" was "from above." Looking at your link, I conclude I was right when I concluded that, and Thayer made an error.
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WordWolf
The camel/rope thing. Lamsa had it as "rope" in his Bible. The Aramaic Interlinear twi put out had it as "rope." Naturally, one can show suspicion on both sources, as it's possible both were, ah, compromised. But I compared the words side by side in my college library. They had a copy of the book "The Aramaic Origin of the Four Gospels." I eyeballed both words carefully and could not find a difference between the two. Most people can simply conclude that it was hyperbole and get the meaning, and, either way, it is still hyperbole. Neither a rope nor a camel can fit in the eye of a needle, and with man, this is impossible. That was the point regardless, although I prefer having a correct translation either way.
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WordWolf
"The most concerning and obvious question in all of this is:
Why did an all-knowing, all-wise and all-powerful divine being,...."
[I was under the impression that this wasn't going to be one of those threads. If this is going to be one of those threads, I'll just see myself out. I came to discuss content and translation, not engage in an angry shouting match that won't convince anyone of anything and will only waste time. If this thread is going to change into one of those threads now that I am in it, I'm not sticking around.]
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Charity
You guessed in error what my tone was in asking that question - I am not angry, just bewildered. But you are correct in the point you made. If I can delete or edit the post, I will and will put in in a different thread.
My apologies WordWolf.
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