Subject: Re: All or some

From: [email-masked] (Jim West)
Date: Sun, 02 Jun 1996 16:15:04 -0400 (EDT)

>The question: Does anyone know why it is that in Matthew 28:17b the usual
>translation is 'but some doubted'. The little I've been able to get hold of
>regarding this trans. indicates that the inclusion of 'some' is an exception
>to what would usually be 'but doubted'. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but
>is this a bit of subjectivism/bias on the part of our forebears, or is there
>an explanation outside of someone not wanting all of the disciples to be
>cast in a bad light?

>Dwight Nelson

The best place to look is a good commentary on MT.  I might suggest Eduard
Schweizer's.  I would, for  my part, say that the translators are grappling
with the problem of translating a very simple Greek sentence into an English
sentence that makes some sense.  Literally the clause reads "the (pl. masc.
def. art.) but (postpositive "de") they doubted (3rd plural aorist verb)"
"hoi de" seems to serve as a colloquialism for something like our english
"some" = "but some doubted".
I don't think there is any desire among translators to cover up this doubt-
they are just struggling with the everpresent difficulty of making one
language make sense in another.

Yours,

Jim West