What Is the Best Rendition of Rom.1:5?

Yeah, in his footnote on p. 68 he says subjective genitive, and cites several scholars.

I think a key here is in interpretation. I've thought that the obedience of faith talked about in 1:5 is that of the Apostle Paul. However, it could be that of those who obey faith, which might be the subjective genitive. In 16:26 it seems more obvious that it is the faith of those believing through evangelism rather the obedience of the evangelizer himself.

Sleep well.

 

I can appreciate the argument for the subjective and objective positions. When I was teaching myself Greek 10 years ago I started with Romans - OK maybe not the best choice!

But I read that first chapter over and over and over and read every commentary I could get. I recall Fitzmyer and Cranfield favor the appositional genitive - and their arguments made sense.

Today my bias is towards a synchronic linguistic approach. Here I so wish that I (like John of Japan) could really speak a second or third language! But because of that I tend to look more at context rather than minutiae of what various commentators have said about the "nuances" of this or that word. This seems only half of the question when faced with a text written by different, non-native Greek speakers.

Have a good day all!

 

I can identify with this. The first book I translated into Japanese was John, but then I went with Romans next, and the first book our committee worked over was Romans. Whew--no wonder Peter thought Paul was hard to understand! :BangHead:

I think this passage illustrates the translation principle that if possible ambiguities should be preserved in the receptor language. That way the reader is allowed to make his or her own interpretive choices.

Of course literary translation is different. There is a fairly recent theory that I kind of like that a translation of a literary work should stand on its own as a literary work. Therefore the translator in that case would be considered an artist as well as the original author. But, as great as the Bible is as literature, it is still inspired by God. :type:

 

Translation should be approached as an art and not as a science.

Very true. And at times I think many of the older works, while written by men of superb scholardhip tend to treat it more as a science.

I have always tried to think of any translation passage as an excerpt from actual speech. This has led me to value context more than a lexicon description of a word's meaning. This, I think, one area where comtemporary synchronic linguistics has brought something good to the table.

 

Yep, still hanging in there. And looking back at our Japanese translation, I see that the committee went with the subjective genetive on 1:5.