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Romans 8:16 — Why Render
PNEUMA as a Person?
Editor's Note: This
response answers a reader's question concerning the ISV's rendering of
the Greek neuter personal pronoun in Romans 8:16 to connote sentience
and personhood to the Holy Spirit.
I have been reading your
translation principles and I find nothing I can clearly apply to your
handling of the Greek pronouns that have "pneuma" as the antecedent.
By way of a short example, in Rom 8:16 you have "The Spirit himself" for "auto
to pneuma". A quick, but not exhaustive check, of other similar
occurrences, shows similar liberty in your translation. What principles of
translation are you using in this area and ought not they be clearly
described within the Translation Principles?
Not to sound too pedantic, but there's a very practical reason why we
don't explain how we render autos when it modifies a noun. Far from being
a "liberty in [our] translation", you have correctly observed by looking
up similar occurrences that when autos modifies a noun, it's
commonly rendered in the ISV like we did in Romans 8:16; i.e., as "...
himself", ".. itself", or "... herself". The renderings occur this way
because autos is often used in the Gk. NT (and LXX, too, by the
way) to reflect this reflexive nuance. To sum up, the autos
formulae are not reflective of translation principles, their reflective of
normal Greek grammar that any Greek student in seminary would learn during
his or her first year exegesis or grammar classes. So we don't need to
publish them on our Translation Principles pages or in the Front Matter to
the ISV.
Also, see paragraph 11a of our
Principles of Translation to see an allusion to the pronoun issue, by
the way.
[This initial answer from us
prompted an additional response from the reader. This additional response
appears to indicate that the reader has a theological ax to grind, so to
speak, which is that the use of the neuter noun pneuma in the Greek
NT requires that the Spirit of God not be a person. It's been our
experience that certain types of questions aren't really being asked so
the questioner can learn, but rather so he can promulgate a minority
report view, so to speak, of Christian doctrine. This proved to be the
case, as you'll note below.]
I understand the use of
autos as an intensive and the reflexive nuance. The liberty I refer to
is the choice of "himself" to translate the neuter auto. Now where
the subject is personal, an English translator would normally select the
gender of the English pronouns according to the subject's natural gender
rather than the grammatical gender of the Greek. The selection of himself,
in this instance, reflects orthodox Trinitarian belief in the Holy Spirit
being a person.
Now, the same liberty was
available to the original authors of the NT Greek. Indeed, there are many
examples in the NT where rules of grammatical agreement were not followed
when a person was the grammatical subject of a sentence. So what do we find
in the New Testament regarding the pronouns (and other parts of speech as
well) that have pneuma as their antecedent? Did the apostles ever
exercise this liberty to ignore the normal rules of Greek gender agreement
in relation to the Spirit? A complete study of occurrences where masculine
and neuter Greek forms differ, will prove the answer to be no, not once, the
desperate attempts by a few to use ekeinos in John 16:13 being
dismissed as unreasonable and incorrect. This means, that every such time
they used a neuter form modifying pneuma they were making a choice to
do so.
So I must ask that, if the
Greek authors did not choose to exercise the liberty permitted to them, by
normal rules of Greek usage, in relation to the Spirit, why do the ISV
translators elect to do so without conveying this fact to the readers of the
translation? I can understand the reasons for the choice of gender for the
English pronouns, that is not the issue. Should not such a choice be clearly
explained within the translation principles so the reader can know what is
being done? It appears to me to be a simple matter of honesty. On the face
of it the ISV translations of Rom 8:16 and many other similar verses are
mistranslations. First year Greek proves that easily.
No it doesn't. See Dr.
Giacumakis' rebuttal, below.
In the absence of related,
grammatical evidences within the NT to support the ISV translations in this
area it seems necessary to me that there be a clear statement that the
translation, in this area, is based on a Trinitarian presupposition. That
would protect the translation from a potentially serious charge of
mistranslation.
This is not a doctrinal
argument.
Ah, but it is! See Dr.
Giacumakis' rebuttal, below.
Rather, I do not believe that
doctrine should be used to make a translation decision and then that fact
not be published. I have been reading your translation principles and I find
nothing I can clearly apply to your handling of the Greek pronouns that have
"pneuma" as the antecedent.
We don't need one. That's
because
paragraph 11a of our Principles of
Translation is adequate. See that paragraph to see an allusion to the
pronoun issue, as we noted above.
By way of a short example, in
Rom 8:16 you have "The Spirit himself" for "auto to pneuma". A quick,
but not exhaustive check, of other similar occurrences, shows similar
liberty in your translation. What principles of translation are you using in
this area and ought not they be clearly described within the Translation
Principles?
We already told this person what principles of translation we're using.
And we pointed him to that paragraph 11a in our
Principles of Translation.
This reader ignored what we wrote, so se asked Dr. George Giacumakis,
General Editor of the ISV—and himself a native modern Greek speaker and
writer!—to respond to this reader's question. Here's what he wrote:
Here are some thoughts on the issue of the Greek neuter and the way it is
translated into English, or for that matter into any other languages:
-
Please understand that much of the Greek writing in the New Testament
comes from a Hebrew/Aramaic speaking person. Hebrew and Aramaic have no
neuter case – only masculine or feminine. What we would call neuter
concepts were rendered as masculine or as feminine in Semitic languages.
-
We
think that the Gospels may have had Hebrew originals, and that the Greek
gospels are translations, or that the Gospel writers were so Semitic in
their thought patterns that they wrote Greek through their Semitic
language sieve. (For example: so many sentences that begin with the
Greek kai, reflecting
the Hebrew vav).
For your information, we have available in published form a
Hebrew edition of the Gospel of Matthew, copied and referred to by a
hostile rabbi in his writings during the European Middle Ages. What we
don’t know: from where did this textual trail of the Hebrew copy of
Matthew originate and get passed on by rabbinic copyists.
-
You
may wonder why all this focus on Hebrew or Semitic origins – because
what I said above affects how many of the biblical writers wrote. A
“Paul” and a “Luke” were perhaps native Greek speakers, but most of the
other writers of the New Testament had a Semitic language as their
native or first language. This definitely affected how they wrote
Greek. The native language and dialect of a person affects how they
would write in a second language. Just as you now have so many English
dialects in the
USA (just listen
to many of my university students speaking or writing), so you did in
the Greek world.
-
As
a second language Greek speaker myself, I often translate a Greek neuter
into masculine or feminine, depending on the context.
-
Now
as to the translation of the words for spirit or soul, once again the
context must come into consideration. The word for “spirit” can also
mean “wind.” The NT speaks about lying to the Spirit or to God. Now in
English one does not lie to the wind, but to a person. So the fact is
that one has to translate spirit as a person.
-
Keep in mind that the weakest form of argument is the argument from
silence. Just because the NT Greek writers chose to use neuter ending
words, and not masculine or feminine words or pronouns in certain
contexts, does not mean by their not using these words, they were not
recognizing the personhood of God.
-
Also, you mention that “First year Greek proves that easily” in your
letter below. However, a first year Greek student would not make a very
good translator, for they have not yet taken into account dialectical
differences affecting how one translates.
-
As
to the orthodox Trinitarian concept of God, again it depends on one’s
definition of a member of the Trinity. One extreme is to define the
word as referring to three
gods, or on the other side of the spectrum, the God of the OT (who
is always presented by the Hebrew plural word
elohim) is only one
entity. In reality the NT scriptures teach about the Godhead/Trinity –
the supremacy of the Father.
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