Help me in translating this Greek into English

[mwh]

Sorry guys, it just won’t wash.

@Victor

Either translation of ἤλθομεν, simple past or perfect, is justifiable in the present case. The use of two concurrent aorists and their being conjoined by καὶ is no guarantee that the second event is implied as having been completed or even initiated hard upon the first, though. My own feeling, and evidently that of others (e.g. the American Standard version*), is that the action described by εἴδομεν is conceived of as having occurred relatively remotely (days or weeks) before the time of speaking, and should be rendered in English by the simple past, whilst the action described by ἤλθομεν is presented as just completed at the moment the speakers announce the reason for their arrival, and in consequence should be rendered by the perfect.

The point is that there is no indication of any such differentiation IN THE GREEK. The two verbs are presented in parallel, on a par with one another, and any semantic distinction between them is imported by us, and falsifies the text. They have to be translated identically.

@Victor

One factor in the choice of translation that nobody has mentioned, but that may be influential, is the divergent usage of simple past and perfect tenses among speakers of American and British English: speakers of Am. E. favour simple pasts in some circumstances where speakers of Br. E. prefer perfects. I don’t know which variety of English is native to you, but certainly for a native speaker of British English translating ἐκέρδησας (18, 15), ἠργάσατο (26, 10), ἐτελεύτησεν (9, 18), ἐμοίχευσεν (5, 28), and ἔφθασεν (12, 28) as simple pasts would leave an impression not merely of “translation English”, written by someone wishing “to show the difference in meaning from the Greek perfect”, but of decidedly unnatural English idiom.

This is true, and a good point. In certain parts of the world, California for one, “Did you eat?” is used to ask if someone has already had lunch, in other parts, e.g. England, “Have you eaten?” is used.

And it’s true that even in American English some of the instances you cite, especially the first, would sound more natural with the “have gained” form. And I’d add to your list 6.12, the Lord’s prayer [unless there’s been a collapse between ἀφήκαμεν and ἀφείκαμεν, which is quite conceivable - I haven’t investigated. - I see that Mark has Ἰδοὺ ἡμεῖς ἀφήκαμεν πάντα καὶ ἠκολουθήκαμέν σοι (10.28), as if ἀφήκαμεν is being used as equivalent to the “correct” perfect ἀφείκαμεν–while in Matt this becomes Ἰδοὺ ἡμεῖς ἀφήκαμεν πάντα καὶ ἠκολουθήσαμέν σοι, unequivocally aorist. Well, I leave this hanging. There must be literature on this.] - Anyhow, to that extent I’ll relent: occasionally the aorist may most naturally be translated by the english “has” form. But (i) that only shows that even main-clause aorist doesn’t quite invariably map exactly on to English simple past (English idiom may differ), (ii) that’s all the more reason to read the text in Greek and not in translation, for otherwise the semantic difference between aorist and perfect is lost, and (iii) in any event this does NOT apply in the case of our target sentence, where there’s nothing unnatural-sounding about “We saw his star and came to worship him” (sc. “and here we are”–but that’s only understood, it’s not in the Greek.)

@Victor

• “for we saw his star in the east, and are come to worship him.”

You gotta be kidding. “are come” for plain common-or-garden down-to-earth ἤλθομεν?! (It would be fine for ἥκομεν, but that’s not what we have.) That’s truly horrendous.

@Markos

Indeed, the sense being:

ἰδόντες γὰρ αὐτοῦ τὸν ἀστέρα ἐν τῇ ἀνατολῇ, πάρεσμεν προσκυνῆσαι αὐτῷ.

You’re telling Matthew what he ought to have written?! He could have written that if that’s what he meant, but he didn’t. Your semi-classicizing paraphrase represents what you would like the sense to be, not what it actually is. I can imagine him retorting ὃ γέγραφα γέγραφα.

[Victor]

It would not be worth the candle to attempt any committed or lengthy “resistance” against such evident determination not to be budged from the negligible piece of territory you stand upon. There are 65 indicative aorists in Matthew alone which are translated by both the AV and RV with English perfects. Of the 45 different mainstream English translations of the Bible or New Testament reproduced on the Bible Gateway website only one translates ἤλθομεν in Matthew 2, 2 with a simple past, and that is, predictably, Young’s Literal Translation, a fact which in itself should indicate clearly enough the principle that is at stake here: namely the precedence which at all times idiom takes over literalness in any translation designed for publication and not merely as a didactic tool. In this light, your insistent appeal to what is “IN THE GREEK” is both unnecessary and irrelevant.

[mwh]

I apologize for the caps, but I’m sorry my last post made no impression on you. I wholeheartedly agree that Greek tense usage and English tense usage do not exactly coincide, and of course that applies to the Greek aorist too, which, I again agree, is sometimes best translated by a perfect. In this particular sentence that does not seem to me justifiable, for the reasons I’ve given. I won’t repeat myself. Of course I agree with your penultimate post that the seeing (eidomen) preceded the coming (hlthomen); Matthew’s paratactic style doesn’t explicitly say so, but the order in which he records the events indicates that, even if it weren’t perfectly obvious both from the preceding narrative and from a real-life point of view. Where we part ways is over whether or not this (or any) pair of conjoined aorists can justifiably be translated differently from one another (you, with all significant published English translations) or would better be translated identically (me, on grounds you consider negligible).

Veni vidi vici, “I came, I saw, I have conquered”?

By all means have the last word. I’m out.