From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Wed Jul 08 1998 - 10:03:20 EDT
>Pardon my late response. I can only respond once daily. So, pardon me if it
>appears as though I am elongating a thread when really I am not.
>
>I found this Translation's footnote on "Marshal" persuading. Please give
>feedback as to whether LOGOS could have a reference to "putting in order"
>"marshalling" rather than to a spoken word, which is the unquestioning
>assumption of many. Isn't this similar to those lego (LEGW) blocks implying
>"assembling?"
I am not going to cite the entire message as it is available to everyone
interested in the archives (by which I mean the new Lyris Archives to which
every subscriber has access through the web).
What chiefly disturbs me about the use of "Marshal" as a preferred single
translation for LOGOS in the Johannine Prologue is not so much that it is
not applicable as one possible sense of LOGOS but that it delimits the
possible senses of LOGOS from a plurality to a single term. The primary
virtue, I think, of carrying the Greek word LOGOS over into English
transliteration (and I'd really rather do that even than convey it as
"Word") is that the Greek word is richer in background and range of
connotations and denotations than any single English word can convey. I've
referred previously in discussions on John 1:1 to the passage at the
opening of Goethe's Faust ("Im Studierzimmer") where Faust opens the Bible,
seen IN ARCHi HN hO LOGOS, and starts to translate it as "Im Anfang war das
Wort," then, dissatisfied with that version as insufficient, he proceeds
through a variety of German words to convey LOGOS, ending up with the word
for "deed": "Im Anfang war die Tat." Any or all of Faust's suggested
versions could be justified and others might also be justified.
The problem with "Marshal" is that it remains a limited version of LOGOS;
it relies overmuch upon one etymological derivation of LOGOS from LEGW when
others are possible and legitimate and despite the fact that usage within a
cultural tradition and common parlance is a much more important factor in
meaning conveyed by any particular word in a given context. The fact is
that LOGOS has so rich a cultural heritage in both Greek philosophy and
Jewish scripture that scholars cannot readily reach a clear consensus on
which items, if any, of the two backgrounds, may legitimately be IGNORED in
the endeavor to understand exactly what LOGOS means in the Johannine
prologue.
To summarize, then: in my view, it's not that "Marshal" is an illegitimate
sense for LOGOS but that it is too narrow a delimitation of all that LOGOS
may and probably does mean to convey in the Johannine Prologue.
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University
Summer: 1647 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu OR cconrad@yancey.main.nc.us
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/
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