Thursday, March 29, 2007

Hebrews 10:24—consider what, or who?

This passages is very frequently mistranslated.

First, look at the Greek: καὶ κατανοῶμεν ἀλλήλους εἰς παροξυσμὸν ἀγάπης καὶ καλῶν ἔργων....

Then consider (pun unintended) the following, and ask yourself, "What's wrong with this picture?"
AMP And let us consider and give attentive, continuous care to watching over one another, studying how we may stir up (stimulate and incite) to love and helpful deeds and noble activities,

ESV And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works,

GWN We must also consider how to encourage each other to show love and to do good things.

ISV And let us continue to consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds,

MOF and let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good deeds

NAB We must consider how to rouse one another to love and good works.

NAS and let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds,

NAU and let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds,

NET And let us take thought of how to spur one another on to love and good works,

NIV And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds.

NLT Let us think of ways to motivate one another to acts of love and good works.

NRS And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds,

RSV and let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works,

4 comments:

Ray Fowler said...

Well, grammatically it is definitely who rather than what: "And let us consider one another unto the provoking of love and good works," but I am not sure what that means unless you translate it the way most of the other translations do. What were you trying to get at here?

DJP said...

The author isn't directing us to attend to an activity, but to persons. Perhaps it is a matter of nuancing, but there's no need to change the author's own emphasis. The mistranslation could be taken to stress activities and programs; the author stresses persons. We are closely to attend to one another, with a particular goal in mind — not to closely attend to an activity or program, with people as statistics.

Ray Fowler said...

I like it! Subtle, but a valid and helpful distinction.

Thanks again for your blog. I have enjoyed stopping by and interacting with the Greek text of Hebrews this month.

Ray Fowler said...

Whoops, I made some changes in my Google account earlier today, but I didn't realize it was going to print my name out like that. That looks really tacky! Sorry, and hopefully this will work better.